Consciousness... what's the deal?

[garthoverman]

I want to know what you think about consciousness. Its a rather slippery thing to define and apprehend, so I would like to know what you think consciousness is. I'm not so much concerned with facts for the moment, but more I want to understand how you regard consciousness and where it fits into your worldview -- theist and atheist alike (or other).

What do you think consciousness does? What is its function? Do you think it is an emergent property? Is it material/immaterial? How do you think it fits into the mind/body problem? Where does it stand in relation to ontology and epistemology? Is your consciousness something that is locked up tightly inside your skull married to the physical brain, or does consciousness permeate all the cells of the body, or is it entirely an illusion? Do animals have consciousness? What about plants? What about rocks? Can we even know that other humans are truly conscious?How does consciousness relate to the spirit or soul? Does consciousness survive death? Does consciousness precede birth?What is the difference between waking consciousness and sleeping/dreaming consciousness? Are there other altered yet valid states of consciousness such as hypnotic trance or drug-induced delirium? If so, what do they tell us about consciousness? Does God have a consciousness? How does consciousness relate to free will? How is consciousness related to imagination and memory?

That's a good list to get you started. Please, please, please do not feel obligated to answer all those questions, nor should you feel confined to answering only those. I invite the participants to freely expound on whatever issues related to consciousness that strike their fancy, and I offer the above list simply as an example of the questions I think about when I contemplate consciousness.

Thanks in advance for whatever you'd be willing to share.

Yours,
Garth

[Pereynol of Sheer Dread]

Though every human being experiences his or her own subjectivity, no one is capable of saying just what it is with any exhaustive success. We can say, "Consciousness is X," but we are thereby reducing experience to words. And this reduction fails to do justice to the thing so implausibly reduced. We can say, "Consciousness is subjectivity," or "Consciousness is the interior soliloquy that transpires between the subject and the object, the 'I' and the 'me,' or, the self and the other." We could say, and do say, many such things, attempting to create synonyms and grappling with metaphors. Often, we use our own technology to create new comparitive metaphors for consciousness; subject/object relations are styled in terms of transmitter/receiver or hardware/software. We use grammatical metaphors, numerical ones, or whatever, generating reifications as deftly as we may, but we still cannot effect the transmutation of experience into theory.

We also try to reduce the cosmos, be it conscious or not, to limited theoretical concepts like "matter," "spirit," "energy," or "mind," etc, etc. Having done this, we then turn to build more complex mechanistic pictures and models in which our theoretical concepts function. These speculative ventures are not without value, but they always entail a dogmatism entirely unwarranted by the sheer dubiety of the frail human processes inherent in their generation.

Then there is mysticism, which is perhaps the most faithful method of speaking about experience, in that mysticism recognizes its own intrinsic expressive and communicative limitations while yet attempting, in measured humility, something that cannot be done---the reduction. Words are always inadequate but always indispensible.

I think consciousness is inseparable from God. I further believe that God reveals himself as consciousness becomes a "dative of disclosure," very much in the phenomenological sense, a "clearing," as Heidegger had it, in which truth, aletheia, that which is "unconcealed" comes to itself in various degrees of reflexivity. Any attempt to delineate the soul is in some respect phenomenological.

Consciousness is both an emergent property and the ground of being. (These are all inadequate words.) Consciousness doesn't seem to be spread uniformally throughout the things which exist, but it does manifest itself by degrees with varying intensity and development. Consciousness, moreover, seems to manifest itself in various kinds; there is moral consciousness, intellectual power, and artistic insight, imagination, analytical acumen, and simple compassion. There is also raw, selfish drive---and cruelty. What to make of all the diversity and flavor associated with being conscious becomes a matter of interpretation, fueled by reason and intuition, as well as other things.

We differ and we argue, we are moved and we frame words and concoct stories according to the flux of our motivation. We flicker and are gone. But we dream of eternity, and the divine perpetuation of what is good. I believe God has promised something along this order; others think differently. Life---moves. Words are spoken and written. Our words are in some sense a shadow of that divine Logos which moves, and the context in which it moves is, in some mysterious way---itself---that God "in whom we....have our being."

[Morpheus]

great topic. the other day i was considering starting a thread on consciousness myself.

i tend to equate consciousness with the mind, though i'm not sure this is a valid affiliation. most of my thoughts on consciousness are merely speculation, since the science of consciousness isn't really too well established.


Is it material/immaterial?

i think it's immaterial. consciousness, imo, provides a problem for the materialist. there are some arguments against the purely materialistic view of consciousness, and i think they're outlined well in the beginning of this essay by david chalmers:

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/nature.html

consider this thought experiment: if we had the technology to build a machine/computer that was an exact replica of a human brain, would this machine be conscious? i suppose it is possible that it would be, and that consciousness emerges due to some special combination of matter, but intuitively to me it seems like this thing would not be conscious. partly for that reason, i consider consciousness something apart from the physical brain, as something immaterial.


Is your consciousness something that is locked up tightly inside your skull married to the physical brain, or does consciousness permeate all the cells of the body, or is it entirely an illusion? Do animals have consciousness? What about plants? What about rocks?

i think consciousness is tied to the physical brain, in the sense that i am of the position that existents that do not possess physical brains (such as plants and rocks) are not conscious. of course, there is no way for me to know that plants and rocks aren't conscious, because (last i heard) consciousness is not experimentally detectable. iow, if you have a physical brain, there isn't a part of the brain you can look at to determine if the person whose brain is being observed is conscious. so if consciousness is not something that can be detected simply from looking at the matter that gives rise to it, i suppose it is possible that even things without physical brains are conscious as well. that's the fascinating thing about consciousness - i can only know of my own consciousness, and i cannot know if other humans i interact with are themselves conscious.

as far as animals go, i do not think they are conscious. the main reason i am of this position is because i, as a christian, think that human beings are ontologically distinct from lower animals, and right now it seems likely to me that consciousness is one of the fundamental differences between the two. of course, once again, insofar as consciousness is not empircally detectable the question of animal consciousness cannot be definitively answered.


What do you think consciousness does? What is its function?

i think that in some way it affects brain states. the problem, of course, is that one can (i assume) observe a phsyical brain and account for all of its states without even appealing to consciousness.

however, the brain at its most microscopic level involves quantum events. most basically, the quantum tunneling of electrons and protons between amino acids allows for the unbelievably efficient folding of the proteins that make up the tubulin molecule, which is the basic unit of the microtubules; the arrangement of microtubules is directly responsible for neural signaling and neural connections. now, instead of being statistically cancelled out at more macroscopic levels, the quantum events in the brain seem to be amplified, because each subsequent level in the brain involves iterative, massively parallel processing. so the quantum events taking place in our brain seem to actually play an important role - they determine one of many possible brain states, which is why one can still track a physical brain and account for one brain state on the basis of a previous one despite the role of completely chance events.

that being said, i would purely speculate that perhaps consciousness is linked to these quantum happenings. if it is, then i really have no idea how.


Does consciousness survive death? Does consciousness precede birth?

i would answer no to the latter question, and yes to the former. though i am of the position that physical entities not possessing a physical brain are not conscious, i do not think that it is logically impossible for there to be consciousness without a physical brain.


Does God have a consciousness?

i think he does. i think many people would say that god is purely consciousness. however, this raises an interesting issue - according to the traditional theistic pov, god created and is sovereign over everything else aside from himself. so that means that, hypothetically, at some point god existed by himself. now, as far as i know to be conscious is to be conscious of something. if god existed by himself as purely consciousness, then all he could be conscious of would be his consciousness. this seems like a possible problem, because it involves pure self-reference.

i see a few ways around this problem, however. first, it could simply be the case that god's consciousness is ontologically diffferent from ours, and that applying our conceptions of consciousness to him is futile. or perhaps he is not purely conscious, and there is some non-conscious part of himself of which he supposedly was conscious when nothing else existed aside from himself.

or, maybe the concept of the trinity comes into play. if god is three persons, then could he possibly consist of three inextricably linked consciouses (sp?). could, say, god the father be conscious of god the son and god the holy spirit, the latter two themselves being consciouses (sp) who are conscious of the others as well? i don't know if that makes any sense or if it ravages the normal conception of the trinity (or consciousness, for that matter), but it is interesting to consider.


How does consciousness relate to free will?

these thoughts are purely theological/philosophical musings -

maybe it's possible that consciousness is the mediator between the spiritual realm and the physical realm. if human beings are both spiritual and physical creatures, this could be the case. i am of the position that free will does exist and that it is immaterial, because everything we have observed that is material is either completely determined or completely random (i.e., they do not accord with any normal conception of a free choice). so, maybe our free will choices are relayed through our consciousness, which somehow affects our brain states accordingly and brings about some truly chosen action.

that's about enough wild speculation for the time being. :smile: hopefully the mysteries of consciousness become illuminated in the near future, so this interesting phenomenon (pun intended) can become better understood.

regards.

[MagellansFolly]

Yesterday @ 10:29 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=142256#post142256)
garthoverman:

I would like to know what you think consciousness is.

[snip]
Do you think it is an emergent property? Is it material/immaterial? How do you think it fits into the mind/body problem? Where does it stand in relation to ontology and epistemology?
[snip]
Do animals have consciousness? What about plants? What about rocks? Can we even know that other humans are truly conscious?
[snip]


I've been asking myself many of the same questions, and appreciate the opportunity to share some answers I have come to.

[properties with subjective character]

Consciousness is an abstraction of the properties we attribute to mental states (or mental processes) that they are "conscious". I think that the intrinsically subjective character of these conscious properties distinguish them from most properties that scientists use to characterize objects in spacetime (the physical world, Descartes' res extensa or things with extension).

[picking out regularities with a first-person scheme of individuation]

I think that there are physical phenomena underlying conscious mental states, however we apprehend those mental states as conscious using a distinct "scheme of individuation" (I got the term from Barwise and Perry's situation semantics) that happens to have an intrinsically first-person character. If we only pick out properties of mental states that have a third-person character, then we fail to pick out the properties that make something conscious.

In fact, this scheme of individuation for the mental is not purely subjective, it is what we use to evaluate behaviors (evolutionarily vital for survival) and equate the inner unseen causes of the behavior of other humans with our own subjectively-felt inner causal states. Especially since we have language, and can agree with others that we are talking about the same (type of) mental states (i.e., beliefs, desires, plans, intentions), we are completely justified in picking out and classifying something we can't see. So we use a third-and-first-person scheme of individuation, that precisely classifies the mental states of others as the same (type) as our own mental states that we can feel subjectively. We are confident that those mental states in others have a similar subjective feel to them as we know first hand it has a feel for us, and our conversations with them only confirm that.

So the third-and-first-person scheme of individuation we use for mental states allows us to pick out an aspect of the physical phenomena in human brains in terms of a typology that is intrinsically subjective. This position boils down to a kind of dual-aspect monism.

[conscious mental states are different but not supernatural]

Scientists have traditionally confined themselves to third-person schemes of individuation, but that is no good if you are going to study conscious aspects of psychology, which cognitive science is now doing. I think that Turing machine functionalism, and related hypotheses of cognitivism or functionalism or strong AI, are inadequate for understanding the subjective character of conscious mental states. However, I think my position, like that of John Searle, does not commit me to anything supernatural.

I am only claiming that there are some aspects of evolved complexity that cannot be characterized by a merely third-person scheme of individuation. Once we accept the existence and human significance of third-and-first-person schemes, which probably evolved rapidly among hominids a few million years ago, there is nothing mysterious about certain physical phenomena of the brain (neural firing patterns with a dynamic stability that structures our memory and linguistic communications) also having a subjective aspect and thus have consciousness. So Descartes' res cogitans or thinking things are just an aspect of res extensa when observed using a third-and-first-person scheme of individuation.

[mental-and-physical properties and purely-physical properties are alternative types for tokens of a single world]

I don't think this is a property dualism, since in my ontology particular physical objects (with extension in spacetime) can simultaneously be tokens of several different types from different schemes. The types or properties coming from a purely third-person scheme of individuation are not mysteriously different from those of a first-and-third-person scheme. And disagreeing with Plato, I don't think properties exist in some eternal reality outside the world of phenomena. Properties are just regularities in the world, and human abilities to pick them out come from our species' evolved attunement to the complex interactions of various systems of the world. These complex systems in the world exist because evolution is complex in creating regularities beyond entropic cosmic dust.

When we humans are focused on material/physical causation, we generally use a third-person scheme for description and explanation, the intuition behind mainstream physical science. Superstitious explanations in terms of unseen mental agencies pick out a different kind of cause. When we consider mental causation among real human beings, including their beliefs and motivations, we naturally shift into a third-and-first-person scheme where we know first hand the subjective character of certain types of causal mental states. I think this capacity and natural tendency to pick out mental causes is built into a normal human brain, and the impaired development of this capacity may be one explanation of certain forms of autism or Asperger's syndrome. Physicalist researchers, especially cognitive scientists adhering to Turing machine functionalism, are perversely committed to pretending they are autistic, failing to see the subjective character of mental states.

(I am reminded about the old joke about two Behaviourists after they have had sex: "It was great for you, was it great for me?")

[mental can cause physical, it's not just a supervening causally-inert property]

I think this form of dual-aspect monism is stronger than that of Davidson or others who talk of supervenience, because I don't see any problems with mental-and-physical things causing only-physical things. Thing causes thing, we can just look at it from two different aspects.

[no, robots can't think]

I think this account of consciousness is thoroughly naturalistic, while respecting what is distinctive about conscious mental states. It is not reductionist to the physical, but the consciousness we know is heavily dependent on biology. It is also species specific: we only "know" the subjective feel of the inner causal states of other human beings, because they have enough structural similarity to warrant that knowledge. Any claims we make about the similarity of the experience of other species is just a guess, less warranted the farther away they are in the phylogenetic tree.

As for rocks and robots... Any suggestion that essentially human intelligence or understanding or consciousness can emerge from an engineered silicon system ("multiple realizability," an idea adjunct to Turing machine functionalism), and that the inner causal state of a behaving robot is "the same" as what I or another human experience, is confused and ill founded.

[logic and human understanding]

I like this account because I think it gives a good foundation into understanding the role of reasoning and logic, including the potentials and limitations of logically-inspired processes involving representational states in silicon. I would even hazard that it could help us understand how human reasoning deals with subjective experiences like faith-experience or faith-motivation.

I think from this perspective, I can give consistent and reasonable answers to many of the questions Garth posed at the start of this thread. Just try me! Or tell me where my thinking is all wrong, but please be gentle.

[garthoverman]

Yesterday @ 09:57 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=142862#post142862)
pereynol:

Though every human being experiences his or her own subjectivity, no one is capable of saying just what it is with any exhaustive success. We can say, "Consciousness is X," but we are thereby reducing experience to words. And this reduction fails to do justice to the thing so implausibly reduced. We can say, "Consciousness is subjectivity," or "Consciousness is the interior soliloquy that transpires between the subject and the object, the 'I' and the 'me,' or, the self and the other." We could say, and do say, many such things, attempting to create synonyms and grappling with metaphors. Often, we use our own technology to create new comparitive metaphors for consciousness; subject/object relations are styled in terms of transmitter/receiver or hardware/software. We use grammatical metaphors, numerical ones, or whatever, generating reifications as deftly as we may, but we still cannot effect the transmutation of experience into theory.
Well written. I think in general language will always be one step apart from the actual experience it attempts to describe whether its describing consciousness or automobiles. The remarkable thing (to me) is that through language we can share experiences to a certain limited extent. In a certain sense the structuralism of language has a compartmentalizing effect on our thinking, but I think that the communion and cooperation that results from its utility is highly valued in the human psyche. As a result, the nature of our thinking is to some extent pre-packaged by the structure of our language, and that structure tends to be deeply ingrained in the individual.

IMHO, the species is ready to acknowledge the limitations inherent in verbal thinking, and to turn a phrase, I think one of the most important first steps toward "freeing your mind" is to make a concerted effort to think outside those lines, so to speak. In line with this would be a better understanding of personal time that disregards its common conception as an irreversible linear sequence of events, and instead replaces it with an understanding of simultaneity.


We also try to reduce the cosmos, be it conscious or not, to limited theoretical concepts like "matter," "spirit," "energy," or "mind," etc, etc. Having done this, we then turn to build more complex mechanistic pictures and models in which our theoretical concepts function. These speculative ventures are not without value, but they always entail a dogmatism entirely unwarranted by the sheer dubiety of the frail human processes inherent in their generation.
Agreed.


Then there is mysticism, which is perhaps the most faithful method of speaking about experience, in that mysticism recognizes its own intrinsic expressive and communicative limitations while yet attempting, in measured humility, something that cannot be done---the reduction. Words are always inadequate but always indispensible.
I think that in the present day people tend to seek mysticism as a better method of assailing their experience and expressing it, but more often then not fall back on the literalism intrinsic in normal language, thereby defeating the most valuable aspect of mysticism -- metaphor. Metaphor is valuable because it leaves room for personal interpretation which enables the internalization of communicated experiences to go that much deeper. It seems to me, though, that over time certain metaphors become transformed and literalised, and dogma results.


I think consciousness is inseparable from God. I further believe that God reveals himself as consciousness becomes a "dative of disclosure," very much in the phenomenological sense, a "clearing," as Heidegger had it, in which truth, aletheia, that which is "unconcealed" comes to itself in various degrees of reflexivity. Any attempt to delineate the soul is in some respect phenomenological.
I'm not certain I understand you here. It seems like you are implying that all truth is known already, and that our consciousness is in the process of discovering its own knowledge. Is that a fair statement? Can you clarify?


Consciousness is both an emergent property and the ground of being. (These are all inadequate words.) Consciousness doesn't seem to be spread uniformally throughout the things which exist, but it does manifest itself by degrees with varying intensity and development. Consciousness, moreover, seems to manifest itself in various kinds; there is moral consciousness, intellectual power, and artistic insight, imagination, analytical acumen, and simple compassion. There is also raw, selfish drive---and cruelty. What to make of all the diversity and flavor associated with being conscious becomes a matter of interpretation, fueled by reason and intuition, as well as other things.
I would disagree with you if you mean to imply that consciousness is discontinuous in its various manefestations. In general I think our notions of discontinuity and differentiation are both another aspect of cognitive compartmentalization. But concentrating on your statements here, I think we are too arbitrary in acknowledging the consciousness of the various entities we encounter. To me, it is obvious that a plant is aware of its environment when I see it turn its petals toward the sun. Moreso in the instance of primates capable of communicating via sign language. As Morpheus described in his response, there is no external indicator of subjective awareness. We believe that other humans are conscious because they appear as we do, and act like we act, and we know that we are conscious. However, when we enounter something which does not behave as we do nor resemble ourselves, we tend then to see it as without consciousness. The arbitrariness in that process of distinction results in some egregious distortions in our concepts of reality and our relationship with the rest of the planet, IMHO.


We differ and we argue, we are moved and we frame words and concoct stories according to the flux of our motivation. We flicker and are gone. But we dream of eternity, and the divine perpetuation of what is good. I believe God has promised something along this order; others think differently. Life---moves. Words are spoken and written. Our words are in some sense a shadow of that divine Logos which moves, and the context in which it moves is, in some mysterious way---itself---that God "in whom we....have our being."
This seems to relate to a question I posed in the OP. Briefly it asked where consciousness could be found to reside in the body, if at all. I am of the opinion that consciousness permeates the entire body to the outer-most extremeties. In fact, I am of the opinion that it is out of the energy of our individual consciousness that springs our entire physical form. In this way, consciousness is not dependant on the body, but instead the body dependant upon it. I even think it would be fair to say that the Source of our consciousness could be called "God" in a general sense, however the sense in which I permit it does not withstand the doctrines of any organized religion of which I am aware. Basically I think that our consciousnesses are transparent with the God-consciousness, and therefore we collectively direct Its will since collectively we are It.

Thanks for your response.

Yours,
Garth

[garthoverman]

Yesterday @ 10:18 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=142868#post142868)
Morpheus:

great topic. the other day i was considering starting a thread on consciousness myself.

i tend to equate consciousness with the mind, though i'm not sure this is a valid affiliation. most of my thoughts on consciousness are merely speculation, since the science of consciousness isn't really too well established.
I also use "consciousness" and "mind" interchangeably, so I will certainly get your meaning if you do.



i think it's immaterial. consciousness, imo, provides a problem for the materialist. there are some arguments against the purely materialistic view of consciousness, and i think they're outlined well in the beginning of this essay by david chalmers:

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/nature.html
I am likewise a fan of Chalmer's essays on consciousness. I don't tend to agree with all of his speculations, but I think he has diagnosed the "problem" quite well, and I hope that he succeeds in revolutionizing the methodology behind the study of consciousness. Likewise, I think consciousness is immaterial, and that the material springs into being through the sheer will of consciousness. In that way I differ from you in that I believe the immaterial consciousness and material world are intimately related.


consider this thought experiment: if we had the technology to build a machine/computer that was an exact replica of a human brain, would this machine be conscious? i suppose it is possible that it would be, and that consciousness emerges due to some special combination of matter, but intuitively to me it seems like this thing would not be conscious. partly for that reason, i consider consciousness something apart from the physical brain, as something immaterial.
Ye Olde Turing Test.

I regard the phyical form like the tip of an iceberg. On the surface it is all we see, but with the proper understanding of our own ship, I think we can recognise that there must be something more to the tip of that iceberg beneath the surface, just as a portion of our own vessel is submerged in the waters. There must be a threshold, therefore, that makes that which is on the surface distinct from the submerged, yet not seperate. To me, this represents the arbitrary distinction of the subjective and objective worlds. In terms of quantum mechanics, I think this is somehow related to quantum state reduction when [seeming] potentialities become [seeming] actualities.



i think consciousness is tied to the physical brain, in the sense that i am of the position that existents that do not possess physical brains (such as plants and rocks) are not conscious. of course, there is no way for me to know that plants and rocks aren't conscious, because (last i heard) consciousness is not experimentally detectable. iow, if you have a physical brain, there isn't a part of the brain you can look at to determine if the person whose brain is being observed is conscious. so if consciousness is not something that can be detected simply from looking at the matter that gives rise to it, i suppose it is possible that even things without physical brains are conscious as well. that's the fascinating thing about consciousness - i can only know of my own consciousness, and i cannot know if other humans i interact with are themselves conscious.
I suggest you examine your supposition that matter gives rise to consciousness, and imagine that relationship inverted. Even if you don't accept it, it will help you understand how I regard it. In theistic terms, you likely believe that God's consciousness gave birth to the material universe (you may not, feel free to correct me). I also suppose you believe that God's consciousness is quite different than our own, however I don't think that the relationship of God's consciousness to matter is at all diferent from our own.


as far as animals go, i do not think they are conscious. the main reason i am of this position is because i, as a christian, think that human beings are ontologically distinct from lower animals, and right now it seems likely to me that consciousness is one of the fundamental differences between the two. of course, once again, insofar as consciousness is not empircally detectable the question of animal consciousness cannot be definitively answered.
I personally find this Christian belief to be rather distorted -- as you may have gathered by now. I am willing to grant that animal, vegetable, and mineral consciousnesses are organized quite differently than our own, but I still believe that they have consciousness. I am aware that in the absence of empirical testability my belief is unfalsifiable, but I don't see it as any more arbitrary than the empirical definitions of consciousness and the subsequent disqualification of the consciousness of certain entities as a result of being excluded from that arbitrary and inadequate definition.



i think that in some way it affects brain states. the problem, of course, is that one can (i assume) observe a phsyical brain and account for all of its states without even appealing to consciousness.
I think this is a result of the deeply ingrained perception of time and the sequence of events. People seems to think that states of the brain are what dictate states of the mind, whereas again, I see the situation reversed. The problem is that this requires that mind-states temporally precede brain-states. Since the only ways we have to objectively determine (at least with some significant probability) a state of mind is by observing the brain-state, though, I don't see how we could make our way to concluding on objective bases that states of mind in fact determine the brain-state and not vice-versa.


however, the brain at its most microscopic level involves quantum events. most basically, the quantum tunneling of electrons and protons between amino acids allows for the unbelievably efficient folding of the proteins that make up the tubulin molecule, which is the basic unit of the microtubules; the arrangement of microtubules is directly responsible for neural signaling and neural connections. now, instead of being statistically cancelled out at more macroscopic levels, the quantum events in the brain seem to be amplified, because each subsequent level in the brain involves iterative, massively parallel processing. so the quantum events taking place in our brain seem to actually play an important role - they determine one of many possible brain states, which is why one can still track a physical brain and account for one brain state on the basis of a previous one despite the role of completely chance events.

that being said, i would purely speculate that perhaps consciousness is linked to these quantum happenings. if it is, then i really have no idea how.
Much of what you described above is discussed by Penrose in his book "The Large, The Small, & The Human Mind" from which I extracted the Gödel argument. Personally, I do think that consciousness is related to quantum reduction as I indicated above, and as I believe I've conjectured in past posts, I think it relates to freewill and self-identity. In a many-worlds scenario, we are free to identify ourselves with whichever one of the "us's" we like to within some self-imposed limitations. The beginning of the diffraction of selves, though, is with the quantum event. Therefore, reduction is only apparent, but not fully a reality.




i would answer no to the latter question, and yes to the former. though i am of the position that physical entities not possessing a physical brain are not conscious, i do not think that it is logically impossible for there to be consciousness without a physical brain.
I think I covered this sufficiently above.



i think he does. i think many people would say that god is purely consciousness. however, this raises an interesting issue - according to the traditional theistic pov, god created and is sovereign over everything else aside from himself. so that means that, hypothetically, at some point god existed by himself. now, as far as i know to be conscious is to be conscious of something. if god existed by himself as purely consciousness, then all he could be conscious of would be his consciousness. this seems like a possible problem, because it involves pure self-reference.
GASP! Have we discovered something which God can't do?! :wink: (j/k)

I don't see it as a problem, honestly. Its like solipsism which we went over in that other thread. Ultimately all you can really know is yourself.


i see a few ways around this problem, however. first, it could simply be the case that god's consciousness is ontologically diffferent from ours, and that applying our conceptions of consciousness to him is futile. or perhaps he is not purely conscious, and there is some non-conscious part of himself of which he supposedly was conscious when nothing else existed aside from himself.

or, maybe the concept of the trinity comes into play. if god is three persons, then could he possibly consist of three inextricably linked consciouses (sp?). could, say, god the father be conscious of god the son and god the holy spirit, the latter two themselves being consciouses (sp) who are conscious of the others as well? i don't know if that makes any sense or if it ravages the normal conception of the trinity (or consciousness, for that matter), but it is interesting to consider.
I really can't comment on that. :shrug:




these thoughts are purely theological/philosophical musings -

maybe it's possible that consciousness is the mediator between the spiritual realm and the physical realm. if human beings are both spiritual and physical creatures, this could be the case. i am of the position that free will does exist and that it is immaterial, because everything we have observed that is material is either completely determined or completely random (i.e., they do not accord with any normal conception of a free choice). so, maybe our free will choices are relayed through our consciousness, which somehow affects our brain states accordingly and brings about some truly chosen action.
I think that is the right direction.


that's about enough wild speculation for the time being. :smile: hopefully the mysteries of consciousness become illuminated in the near future, so this interesting phenomenon (pun intended) can become better understood.
Well, if Chalmers is right, it won't be easy coming to that understanding.

Yours,
Garth

[MagellansFolly]

Yesterday @ 06:18 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=142868#post142868)
Morpheus:


that's the fascinating thing about consciousness - i can only know of my own consciousness, and i cannot know if other humans i interact with are themselves conscious.



I think this form of skepticism is completely unjustified. There are at least three good reasons for me to know the consciousness of others. Even on purely (traditionally) objective scientific criteria, I can conclude that their behaviors are cause by beliefs, desires, and other conscious mental states. Also, I can know something about the subjective character of their mental states, because I can and do experience relevantly similar mental states. This is perfectly good and significant knowledge, even though it depends on more than purely-physicalist understanding. Thirdly, I can ask them, and they tell me they are conscious. Given the first two reasons, I have no good reason to doubt it.

On the other hand, if an android robot walked up to me and said "I am conscious, and when I see red I feel exactly the same type of subjective experience as when you or other humans see red," I think there is some basis for being skeptical about that claim. But that's a different matter.




as far as animals go, i do not think they are conscious. the main reason i am of this position is because i, as a christian, think that human beings are ontologically distinct from lower animals, and right now it seems likely to me that consciousness is one of the fundamental differences between the two.



What in christian doctrine makes this kind of ontological distinction necessary? What certainties do we have about the relationship between a creator-god and creatures of other species? What I think we can say is that the only variety of consciousness we can know as consciousness is that consciousness in individuals of the same species as us, who have a relevantly-similar background capacity for neural control and subjective feel.




of course, once again, insofar as consciousness is not empircally detectable the question of animal consciousness cannot be definitively answered.




I would agree, to the extent that we can only have definitive answers about human consciousness, because the is the only consciousness we can experience first hand. I don't see any reason why consciousness cannot in principle be empirically detected, and I expect that the neural correlates of human consciousness will be discovered in the next decade or so. We will then have a basis to indirectly characterize the consciousness of other species of animals, but we will still never know what it feels like to be a bonobo or a bat. We can never definitively know the subjective character of another species, with different neural structures and background capacities. For similar reasons, we will never know the subject feel of the "mental states" (inner causal control states) of an android robot, even if the robot design team programmed in features to elicit human empathetic response.

[/QUOTE]

[Pilgrim]

With out reading all of the answers so far written let me just plop down my intial thoughts...

Conciousness is simply self awareness. I think it is intimately tied to the organic/chemical function of the brain and would not exsist with out such.

It is vital to ontological questions because how can think about being with out understanding that you are a being.

epistomologically speaking it is a metaphysical question in that you need awareness of self to frame a foundation for epistomological process but I am not sure it moves beyond foundational neccesity to an operational element.

Does that make sense?

[Defenestrator]

Pilgrim:With out reading all of the answers so far written let me just plop down my intial thoughts...

Conciousness is simply self awareness. I think it is intimately tied to the organic/chemical function of the brain and would not exsist with out such.

Have you read through any of the papers on David Chalmer's sight? The one linked to above is good, although many of them are interesting. Chalmers makes the case that consciousness is more than just "awareness."* He says that in order to explain consciousness, we have to explain not only awareness but also experience. Here is another good paper that I think makes the distinction. http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/facing.html

Here, Chalmers associates these types of characteristics: "the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli; the integration of information by a cognitive system; the reportability of mental states; the ability of a system to access its own internal states; the focus of attention; the deliberate control of behavior; the difference between wakefulness and sleep" with awareness. But he says that consciousness is not only awareness, it also has to do with experience.

And that is what he calls the "hard problem." There is "something it is like" to see red. There is "something it is like" to hear a trumpet. To see what he is saying here it might be helpful to read Nagel's "What is like to be a bat?" (http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/Nagel_Bat.html)

We could imagine that I have a device implanted in my brain that allows me to "see" (experience) infrared. There is something it is like for me to experience infrared. I don't know what that experience is. We could even imagine that that the best neuroscientist/electrical engineer in the world has equiped me with this device and understands it inside and out. She knows exactly how the device works and she knows exactly the way it stimulates my brain. In fact, we could even imagine that she knows every bit of information about my device/brain system that is possible. But if this is the case, does she then know "what it is like" to experience infrared? Chalmers says the answer to this question is "No" - although others disagree with him.


Here are some more articles from ASA that are interesting (although they don't deal with the hard problem, many of them take a crack at definining consciousness from a Christian perspective):

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/PsychologyNeuroscience/PSCF6-01Struthers.html#__Issues%20related%20to%20Human%20Nature
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/PsychologyNeuroscience/S&CB10-99BrownJeeves.html
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/PsychologyNeuroscience/PSCF6-98Polischuk.htm#__Issues%20related%20to%20Human%20Nature
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/PsychologyNeuroscience/PSCF6-01Glanzer.html
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/PsychologyNeuroscience/PSCF12-1990Dembski.html#__Issues%20related%20to%20Human%20Nature

[garthoverman]

Yesterday @ 05:29 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=143103#post143103)
MagellansFolly:

I've been asking myself many of the same questions, and appreciate the opportunity to share some answers I have come to.

[properties with subjective character]

Consciousness is an abstraction of the properties we attribute to mental states (or mental processes) that they are "conscious". I think that the intrinsically subjective character of these conscious properties distinguish them from most properties that scientists use to characterize objects in spacetime (the physical world, Descartes' res extensa or things with extension).
To begin with, I am of the opinion that your definition of consciousness is inadequate. I understand that in order to approach consciousness objectively, the methodological process lends itself to defining consciousness on external characteristics; however, I think that consciousness is so vital that to identify it with an abstract pattern of matter misses the most important aspect of consciousness that (IMHO) needs to be addressed: subjective experience.


[picking out regularities with a first-person scheme of individuation]

I think that there are physical phenomena underlying conscious mental states, however we apprehend those mental states as conscious using a distinct "scheme of individuation" (I got the term from Barwise and Perry's situation semantics) that happens to have an intrinsically first-person character. If we only pick out properties of mental states that have a third-person character, then we fail to pick out the properties that make something conscious.
Yes, I agree, and that is why I felt your definition above was inadequate. Perhaps I misunderstood you above, then.


In fact, this scheme of individuation for the mental is not purely subjective, it is what we use to evaluate behaviors (evolutionarily vital for survival) and equate the inner unseen causes of the behavior of other humans with our own subjectively-felt inner causal states. Especially since we have language, and can agree with others that we are talking about the same (type of) mental states (i.e., beliefs, desires, plans, intentions), we are completely justified in picking out and classifying something we can't see. So we use a third-and-first-person scheme of individuation, that precisely classifies the mental states of others as the same (type) as our own mental states that we can feel subjectively. We are confident that those mental states in others have a similar subjective feel to them as we know first hand it has a feel for us, and our conversations with them only confirm that.
I will agree that this is effective to a limited extent. I believe what you're referring to is also called intersubjectivity where, in short, subjective experiences can be cross-referenced with others via language as a means of verifying the consciousness of a mind seperate from the enquirer. I think intersubjectivity displays a good likelihood that seperate minds exist, but I hardly see it as a firm foundation from which to define consciousness in general since it's effectiveness is limited only to beings capable of communicating via language.


[conscious mental states are different but not supernatural]

Scientists have traditionally confined themselves to third-person schemes of individuation, but that is no good if you are going to study conscious aspects of psychology, which cognitive science is now doing. I think that Turing machine functionalism, and related hypotheses of cognitivism or functionalism or strong AI, are inadequate for understanding the subjective character of conscious mental states. However, I think my position, like that of John Searle, does not commit me to anything supernatural.
I agree with everything in this paragraph.


I am only claiming that there are some aspects of evolved complexity that cannot be characterized by a merely third-person scheme of individuation. Once we accept the existence and human significance of third-and-first-person schemes, which probably evolved rapidly among hominids a few million years ago, there is nothing mysterious about certain physical phenomena of the brain (neural firing patterns with a dynamic stability that structures our memory and linguistic communications) also having a subjective aspect and thus have consciousness. So Descartes' res cogitans or thinking things are just an aspect of res extensa when observed using a third-and-first-person scheme of individuation.
I would be interested to know whether or not you think cosnciousness is a result of the neural firing patterns you spoke of, or if you feel that the neural firing patterns are the result of consciousness. I am of the latter position myself.


[mental-and-physical properties and purely-physical properties are alternative types for tokens of a single world]

I don't think this is a property dualism, since in my ontology particular physical objects (with extension in spacetime) can simultaneously be tokens of several different types from different schemes. The types or properties coming from a purely third-person scheme of individuation are not mysteriously different from those of a first-and-third-person scheme. And disagreeing with Plato, I don't think properties exist in some eternal reality outside the world of phenomena. Properties are just regularities in the world, and human abilities to pick them out come from our species' evolved attunement to the complex interactions of various systems of the world. These complex systems in the world exist because evolution is complex in creating regularities beyond entropic cosmic dust.
As I have explored in a different thread with Morpheus, I think that space-time itself is but an abstraction that results from our particular focus upon regularities that over time have evolved a subjective significance in the human mind. I mean that to apply all the way back along the evolutionary chain even before the emergence of the first protocell. I think that consciousness has been present in forms of energy always.


When we humans are focused on material/physical causation, we generally use a third-person scheme for description and explanation, the intuition behind mainstream physical science. Superstitious explanations in terms of unseen mental agencies pick out a different kind of cause. When we consider mental causation among real human beings, including their beliefs and motivations, we naturally shift into a third-and-first-person scheme where we know first hand the subjective character of certain types of causal mental states. I think this capacity and natural tendency to pick out mental causes is built into a normal human brain, and the impaired development of this capacity may be one explanation of certain forms of autism or Asperger's syndrome. Physicalist researchers, especially cognitive scientists adhering to Turing machine functionalism, are perversely committed to pretending they are autistic, failing to see the subjective character of mental states.
Still, I think this rides on an exclusivisitc definition of consciousness that disregards animal consciousness. Are you of the opinion that animals are not conscious? Obviously they are not conscious in the same way that humans are conscious, but humans are simply an advanced primate ("advanced" by our own somewhat narcissistic standards:wink:). I struggle to understand people that cannot recongize conscious awareness in animals.


(I am reminded about the old joke about two Behaviourists after they have had sex: "It was great for you, was it great for me?")
:lol:


[mental can cause physical, it's not just a supervening causally-inert property]

I think this form of dual-aspect monism is stronger than that of Davidson or others who talk of supervenience, because I don't see any problems with mental-and-physical things causing only-physical things. Thing causes thing, we can just look at it from two different aspects.
I agree.


[no, robots can't think]

I think this account of consciousness is thoroughly naturalistic, while respecting what is distinctive about conscious mental states. It is not reductionist to the physical, but the consciousness we know is heavily dependent on biology. It is also species specific: we only "know" the subjective feel of the inner causal states of other human beings, because they have enough structural similarity to warrant that knowledge. Any claims we make about the similarity of the experience of other species is just a guess, less warranted the farther away they are in the phylogenetic tree.
I agree again, and your statments here answer the last question I posed you above (though I'm too lazy to go erase it). I only want to insist that studies of consciousness be conducted all the while very conscious (pun intended!) of the fact that entities besides humans have consciousness, and that our experimental results with human consciousness might not be sufficient to draw conclusions about consciousness in general.


As for rocks and robots... Any suggestion that essentially human intelligence or understanding or consciousness can emerge from an engineered silicon system ("multiple realizability," an idea adjunct to Turing machine functionalism), and that the inner causal state of a behaving robot is "the same" as what I or another human experience, is confused and ill founded.
Right, although I am of the opinion that a type of consciousness is capable of being engineered into a silicon system, I do not believe that it is possible to construct an exact replica of human consciousness.


[logic and human understanding]

I like this account because I think it gives a good foundation into understanding the role of reasoning and logic, including the potentials and limitations of logically-inspired processes involving representational states in silicon. I would even hazard that it could help us understand how human reasoning deals with subjective experiences like faith-experience or faith-motivation.
I think you saw the thread I started that presented an abbreviated version of the Lucas-Penrose argument for Non-computability of human mathematical understanding. It is based on this argument that I don't believe a classical Turing machine is a real possibility.

Yours,
Garth

[garthoverman]

We could imagine that I have a device implanted in my brain that allows me to "see" (experience) infrared. There is something it is like for me to experience infrared. I don't know what that experience is. We could even imagine that that the best neuroscientist/electrical engineer in the world has equiped me with this device and understands it inside and out. She knows exactly how the device works and she knows exactly the way it stimulates my brain. In fact, we could even imagine that she knows every bit of information about my device/brain system that is possible. But if this is the case, does she then know "what it is like" to experience infrared? Chalmers says the answer to this question is "No" - although others disagree with him.
This is an excellent illustration of what Chalmer's means when he talks about the "hard problem." I hadn't seen it described like this before -- is it your own description, or something from one of Chalmer's essays?

Yours,
Garth

[Defenestrator]

garthoverman:

This is an excellent illustration of what Chalmer's means when he talks about the "hard problem." I hadn't seen it described like this before -- is it your own description, or something from one of Chalmer's essays?

I really can't remember if it is my own or not, to tell you the truth. The origin of all the parts of the illustration are definitely from someone else, but I can't remember if I've ever seen it put together this way elsewhere. I think I got the idea when I was reading "What is it like to be a bat?" and I kind of combined the ideas I got from that with what I've read from Chalmers about Mary the neuroscientist who lives in a black-and-white world. I liked the idea of thinking about radar in a bat because experiencing radar is totally foreign to humans. I think coming to grips with the idea of "what is it like to ..." is easier if you think about what it is like to experience something you've never experienced. So, instead of having Mary the neuroscientist who's never experienced color, I took a neuroscientist/engineer who's never experienced infrared.

[Pilgrim]

I understand what you are getting at Def, and I think I may be a little over my head on this one. However, it seems to me that Chalmers and Nagel are taking a rather to wholistic approach to the question and asserting that, functionally, conciousness invloves not only self awareness but also total awareness. I'm not sure that can be shown in a significant way.

I may be mis-understanding here but it seems like Chalmers want's to say that and individual's concience should be observable by another individual based on experience. Thus the "hard question" of what things, (or has Hiedegger would say "essents") are really like and how one individual might know this based on the report of another.

I guess my problem with this line of reasoning is that it seems to make my conciousness dendant on on outsiders experience with it. Sort of a post-modern model of the concience in which my conciousness is not important, only your interaction with it is.

At any rate, I'm loving this conversation because I have not ever really tried to capture my thoughts on the subject before. Thanks for teaching me.

[Defenestrator]

Pilgrim:

I understand what you are getting at Def, and I think I may be a little over my head on this one.

In my "experience," when I felt that I finally understood what Chalmers was saying, it was like an "Ah-ha" moment. Just read through what he is saying every once in a while and then put it away for a little and then come back to it. Or read one of those essays all the way through, even if you don't feel like you are understanding it.


However, it seems to me that Chalmers and Nagel are taking a rather to wholistic approach to the question and asserting that, functionally, conciousness invloves not only self awareness but also total awareness. I'm not sure that can be shown in a significant way.

I may be mis-understanding here but it seems like Chalmers want's to say that and individual's concience should be observable by another individual based on experience. Thus the "hard question" of what things, (or has Hiedegger would say "essents") are really like and how one individual might know this based on the report of another.

Here's what I think Chalmers is saying. I, and only I, know "what it is like" for me to experience smelling a rose. Nobody else "has access" to my rose-smelling-experience. We can compare my rose-smelling-experience to your rose-smelling-experience and we will probably come to the conclusion that they are similar, but they are not the same.


I guess my problem with this line of reasoning is that it seems to make my conciousness dendant on on outsiders experience with it. Sort of a post-modern model of the concience in which my conciousness is not important, only your interaction with it is.

I think Chalmers is saying the exact opposite, actually. Your subjective experience of whatever - seeing red, listening to Bach, feeling heat from the stove - is not only not dependent on outsiders experience with it but it isn't even available to outsiders. Your subjective experience is only available to you.


At any rate, I'm loving this conversation because I have not ever really tried to capture my thoughts on the subject before. Thanks for teaching me.

All of a sudden its going to click in your head and you'll wonder why it didn't make sense before. Which leads me to the question, "What is it like to feel like one understands Chalmers Hard Problem?"

[Morpheus]

to garth.


Likewise, I think consciousness is immaterial, and that the material springs into being through the sheer will of consciousness. In that way I differ from you in that I believe the immaterial consciousness and material world are intimately related.

well, i guess in a sense that you mention later in your post, i also see a direct relationship between immaterial consciousness and the material world – i believe an immaterial consciousness (god) is responsible for the creation of the material world. of course, this is not the same relationship between consciousness and the material world with which you would agree.

i would be interested if you could expound a little on the idea of how “that the material springs into being through the sheer will of consciousness.” what is the basis for such a view? are you of the position that all material things (e.g., rocks, plants, etc.) have a will?


I regard the phyical form like the tip of an iceberg. On the surface it is all we see, but with the proper understanding of our own ship, I think we can recognise that there must be something more to the tip of that iceberg beneath the surface, just as a portion of our own vessel is submerged in the waters. There must be a threshold, therefore, that makes that which is on the surface distinct from the submerged, yet not seperate. To me, this represents the arbitrary distinction of the subjective and objective worlds. In terms of quantum mechanics, I think this is somehow related to quantum state reduction when [seeming] potentialities become [seeming] actualities.

I think the iceberg analogy is a good one. however, from my position and possibly just due to the ideas i’ve been exposed to and accepted, when i look at a physical object such as a rock or the television next to me, i really don’t intuit that there is something beneath the physical surface. it seems to me that in these instances the physical is all there is. with human beings i do intuit something beneath the physical surface (i.e., consciousness), and that is probably because i exist as a human being and have directly experienced this "submerged" aspect.


I suggest you examine your supposition that matter gives rise to consciousness, and imagine that relationship inverted. Even if you don't accept it, it will help you understand how I regard it. In theistic terms, you likely believe that God's consciousness gave birth to the material universe (you may not, feel free to correct me). I also suppose you believe that God's consciousness is quite different than our own, however I don't think that the relationship of God's consciousness to matter is at all diferent from our own.

you do bring up a good point upon which i touched above, in that, ultimately, i do hold that consciousness (god) gives rise to matter. however, i also believe that the way he created the material world is such that a consciousness that originates in the physical world must be intricately tied to some physical entity (from my view, the physical brain).


I personally find this Christian belief [humans as the only conscious physical beings] to be rather distorted -- as you may have gathered by now. I am willing to grant that animal, vegetable, and mineral consciousnesses are organized quite differently than our own, but I still believe that they have consciousness. I am aware that in the absence of empirical testability my belief is unfalsifiable, but I don't see it as any more arbitrary than the empirical definitions of consciousness and the subsequent disqualification of the consciousness of certain entities as a result of being excluded from that arbitrary and inadequate definition.

again, the problem here is our inability to empirically test any viewpoint on what kinds of physical beings are conscious. i can only speak with knowledge of my own consciousness, and then rationally apply that to human beings in general, as they are supposedly ontologically similar to myself.

when i consider a rock, my gut (and i really don’t think i have much more to go on here) tells me that there isn’t anything such as a consciousness behind its physicality. i suppose the issue wouldn’t be so clear to me when considering an animal – maybe monkeys have some sort of consciousness. but, still, animals seem to exist and act based purely on physical factors (i.e., instinctually), while it seems to be the case that humans are able to act in spite of physical factors that would have them act otherwise. this is moving more toward a description of free will, but i think that there is a direct link between consciousness and free will (assuming it exists).

another interesting issue just popped into my mind: is a blind person conscious? if so, is their consciousness anything similar to our consciousness? as far as my consciousness goes (and that, of course, is the only consciousness on which i can speak with any kind of authority), i am only conscious of things (or derivations of things) that i have perceived via my senses. so, while i suppose a blind person could be conscious of sound, touch, etc., would they have anything similar to mental images? what of a person who (god forbid) is impaired in such a way that they have lost the ability to utilize any of their senses?


I think this is a result of the deeply ingrained perception of time and the sequence of events. People seems to think that states of the brain are what dictate states of the mind, whereas again, I see the situation reversed. The problem is that this requires that mind-states temporally precede brain-states. Since the only ways we have to objectively determine (at least with some significant probability) a state of mind is by observing the brain-state, though, I don't see how we could make our way to concluding on objective bases that states of mind in fact determine the brain-state and not vice-versa.

as i stated in my previous post, i am also of the position that mind can affect brain (i think it can work vice versa, also). but as you say, i don’t see how this position can be empirically verified. perhaps it has something to do with quantum collapse in the presence of a conscious observer.


In a many-worlds scenario, we are free to identify ourselves with whichever one of the "us's" we like to within some self-imposed limitations. The beginning of the diffraction of selves, though, is with the quantum event. Therefore, reduction is only apparent, but not fully a reality.

i think such a viewpoint is appealing, because it seems to emphasize individual volition. perhaps this is the means by which humans (and possibly other entities) possess free will.


morpheus:
that's about enough wild speculation for the time being. hopefully the mysteries of consciousness become illuminated in the near future, so this interesting phenomenon (pun intended) can become better understood.

garth:
Well, if Chalmers is right, it won't be easy coming to that understanding.

i agree. as defenestrator eloquently described in another post, the seeming dichotomy between the phenomenal truths of consciousness and the physical truths of the material world make the issue of consciousness quite unique.


regards.

[Morpheus]

to magellansfolly.


morpheus:
that's the fascinating thing about consciousness - i can only know of my own consciousness, and i cannot know if other humans i interact with are themselves conscious.

magellan:
I think this form of skepticism is completely unjustified.

this was sloppily put on my part, so before i get to your reasoning let me clarify.

i am of the position that it is rational for me to conclude that other human beings are conscious, since i am a human being, and i am conscious (i make this clear in my previous post to garth). however, the point i was attempting to make is that the only consciousness i can directly experience in any way is my own. and this fact is what makes consciousness unique - other things, such as a rock, or a desk, or my left eardrum, can all be experienced equally by myself and other human beings. but you cannot access my consciousness, and i cannot access yours.

so, i am of the position that it is rational to hold that other human beings are conscious, but i maintain that i cannot know that you are conscious since i cannot experience any consciousness other than my own.


Even on purely (traditionally) objective scientific criteria, I can conclude that their behaviors are cause by beliefs, desires, and other conscious mental states.

no, i don’t agree. all we can know about these beliefs and desires that cause their behaviors is the physical aspects of them. their phenomenal aspects – and that really is the core of consciousness – are not scientifically accessible. for example, we can through science conclude that some desire to eat (physical truth deduced from observing my brain) was the cause of me eating a sandwich (behavior), but science cannot say anything about what it was like for me to experience the hunger that led to me eating (i.e., the phenomenal aspect). that’s the hard problem of consciousness – mary, the color-blind neurosurgeon, can know every physical thing possible about the color red, but she will still not know what it is like to see red.


Also, I can know something about the subjective character of their mental states, because I can and do experience relevantly similar mental states.

as stated above, i do think it is rational to assume that other beings like me have somewhat similar subjective experiences. but again, i am not directly privy to this, and i have no way of verifying that such experiences occur to others in a similar fashion.


Thirdly, I can ask them, and they tell me they are conscious. Given the first two reasons, I have no good reason to doubt it.

i agree that this is a good reason to think that other people are conscious. but see above for other issues.


morpheus:
as far as animals go, i do not think they are conscious. the main reason i am of this position is because i, as a christian, think that human beings are ontologically distinct from lower animals, and right now it seems likely to me that consciousness is one of the fundamental differences between the two. ”


magellan:
What in christian doctrine makes this kind of ontological distinction necessary?

the basic christian idea here is that man is endowed with a spiritual aspect to his being, while animals and other physical entities are not. hence the ontological distinction. this is rather clear throughout the bible, but if you want specific verses i can provide them.


What certainties do we have about the relationship between a creator-god and creatures of other species?

well, in my original post i was just speaking from my position as a christian, and as such i think such an ontological distinction exists. my reason for hypothesizing consciousness as some part of this distinction is that it is something that i as a human being experience, and i have no evidence that non-human beings do. of course, i could be wrong, but it does seem to make sense.


What I think we can say is that the only variety of consciousness we can know as consciousness is that consciousness in individuals of the same species as us, who have a relevantly-similar background capacity for neural control and subjective feel.

i’m not as confident here. insofar as phenomenal truths are not completely the product of physical truths (i.e., contra the view that a robot with the exact same physical structure of a human brain would be conscious), i have no way of knowing that some other person’s subjective experience of, say, seeing red is similar to my subjective experience of seeing red, despite the fact that the neural activity involved may be quite similar.


I would agree, to the extent that we can only have definitive answers about human consciousness, because the is the only consciousness we can experience first hand.

i just think it’s a non sequitur to say that i can know about the phenomenal truths of other human beings’ consciousness, simply because i know the phenomenal truths about my consciousness and i am the same species as them.


I don't see any reason why consciousness cannot in principle be empirically detected, and I expect that the neural correlates of human consciousness will be discovered in the next decade or so.

the hard problem of consciousness would still remain. science can empirically detect my brain patterns when i see red, but it cannot detect what it is like for me to see red (the phenomenal aspect).

your comment here raises a question or two: do you think consciousness is objectively real? if so, do you think it exists materially or immaterially?


We will then have a basis to indirectly characterize the consciousness of other species of animals, but we will still never know what it feels like to be a bonobo or a bat. We can never definitively know the subjective character of another species, with different neural structures and background capacities.

i agree that we will never know what it feels like to be a bonobo. but that being said, what do you mean when you say that we will be able to somewhat characterize the consciousness of other species?

regards.

[markporter]

there's some of Chalmer's stuff that I just can't agree with:


A mouse has a simpler information-processing structure than a human, and has correspondingly simpler experience; perhaps a thermostat, a maximally simple information processing structure, might have maximally simple experience? Indeed, if experience is truly a fundamental property, it would be surprising for it to arise only every now and then; most fundamental properties are more evenly spread. In any case, this is very much an open question, but I believe that the position is not as implausible as it is often thought to be.

I can't bring myself to think that a thermostat has even a limited amount of consciousness....If 'experience' is an inherent part of everything physical, then I don't see why it is to us as it is....why we as a person have one distinct consciousness, and our body is not divided up into many, or a hierachy or something or consciousnesses, or why if they form a unity in the human body that this unity should stop there and not extend outwards.

My personal view is that consciousness is a purely spiritual thing.

[Zeluvia]

I have been playing with the idea that consciousness is a primary force, like gravity or the electro-magnetic force.

It is generated by living cells in varying degrees of magnitude.

The brain is clearly a powerful generator of this force, and all living things would have a degree or level of consciousness based on their complexity. Plants of course would have a very rudimentary one, lacking a central brain.

I do think that the conscious energy we create while we are alive may continue after death, however I do NOT think it sustains any sense of identity, that seems to be stored as data files in our physical brains.

I do believe on some level, our collective conscious energy does affect things, and I am playing with the idea that it was this energy that actually began life.

Now how a force like this would exist and be scientifically validatable I have no idea...but maybe the 11 or 13 or however many dimesions of string theory will open up a new understanding of energy and particles.

anyway, just thinking = )

[BeHereNow]

I haven't read the other posts, so forgive me if this has been said.

Our bodies emit electromagnetic waves, indicating that our physical existence is more of a flexible, fuzzy mass than strict physical form. The energy that creates the magnetism, the energy that unites life and death, that's God, and that is consciousness.

[kofh2u]

I have been playing with the idea that consciousness is a primary force, like gravity or the electro-magnetic force.

It is generated by living cells in varying degrees of magnitude.

The brain is clearly a powerful generator of this force, and all living things would have a degree or level of consciousness based on their complexity. Plants of course would have a very rudimentary one, lacking a central brain.

I do think that the conscious energy we create while we are alive may continue after death, however I do NOT think it sustains any sense of identity, that seems to be stored as data files in our physical brains.

I do believe on some level, our collective conscious energy does affect things, and I am playing with the idea that it was this energy that actually began life.

Now how a force like this would exist and be scientifically validatable I have no idea...but maybe the 11 or 13 or however many dimesions of string theory will open up a new understanding of energy and particles.

anyway, just thinking = )

Conscioisness is feedback. It is thinking about thinking.

Every thought is electromagnetic, a different frequency, but the same as light.
We are the light of the electromagnetic thoughts that operate our body's metabolism, and occupy our mind.
Electromanetic energy is eternal, it does not dissipate, it bounces off the background of the universe.

Consciousness has Quantum consequences.

Consciousness admires the work of God's hands.

Consciousness is the is to God what IA, Artificial Intelligence, could be to the Computer Science.

But, Consciousness is still only partial, Unconsciousness 3/4 of our mind.