Honestly, as weird as it might sound, to me it's even weirder to claim that consciousness somehow is just a manifestation of effect that we are already familiar with.
Saying things like "Consciousness is emergent" or "Consciousness is just a side effect of information processing" seems to miss the point. I'm definitely comfortable saying that consciousness is correlated with complexity and information processing, but claiming that it is fully explainable in some mechanistic way sounds suspect to me.
It would sort of be like saying that since large electric charges have only been observed in nuclei with proportionally large mass, then somehow charge is just a manifestation of mass. When we go further it turns out that charge is fundamentally distinct from mass, in fact so distinct that we have to add an entirely new attribute to fundamental particles. The same story goes with spin. Once you have spin and electric charge you get magnetic moments. Ultimately the reason why a magnet is magnetic is because all of these subatomic particles conspire in just the right way to have a macroscopic effect. Of course, not all materials have the property of being magnetic even though they all are made from protons and electrons, but some materials are.
To me, trying to say that consciousness is just something emergent is like saying that electric charge is emergent from mass. I would not be surprised if some type of proto consciousness would be needed in order to understand how macroscopic objects like human brains are self aware, have sensations, etc.
> Saying things like "Consciousness is emergent" or "Consciousness is just a side effect of information processing" seems to miss the point.
It sounds suspect to me too, but the reason the idea is appealing is that it's worked fantastically for hundreds of similar phenomena. To vastly oversimplify thousands of years of philosophy, for most of human history the default position has been that every idea had to be reified into some metaphysical essence.
What is the essence that makes a dog a dog? That makes bread nourishing but rocks not? That makes rocks solid? That makes fire hot? That makes falling objects seek Earth? Again and again, we've found simple physical explanations for these puzzles, that once were regarded as just as inexplicable as consciousness. Indeed, consciousness is now the last essence that survives, and that's why some bet it'll go the same way as all the rest. "But this one is different", indeed, and every single time so far that argument has been wrong.
>Saying things like "Consciousness is emergent" or "Consciousness is just a side effect of information processing" seems to miss the point.
On the contrary, I feel like those who think we need some fundamental consciousness property is missing the point. We expect to find some objective third-person property that is the substrate of consciousness because a phenomenon that seems so unlike every other property should have a fundamental basis. But the mistake is expecting to analyze consciousness in the same way we can analyze other objective properties of physics.
The only things we know to be conscious are complex macro-scale objects with highly complex and rare internal organizations. In fact, the only things we truly know to be conscious are ourselves. It seems to be fundamentally subjective; it is not something to be directly witnessed as a third-person observer. So our investigation should start there. What we want is a theory for deriving organizational subjectivity from a non-subjective substrate. What might this look like? A system with subjectivity will need to recognize the external from the internal. It needs an egocentric mode of representation with the ability to represent itself and its dispositions and intentional stances, as well as states to represent the external world. My intuition tells me such a system has a non-zero "inner life", i.e. there is something it is like to be it. But I see no reason to think "fundamental" subjectivity, whatever that is, could do any explanatory work here. The causal and representative power is in the organization.
I'm personally a fan of attention schema theory. It's based on the idea that consciousness emerges from an advancing capability to create models of both the external and internal world. For me, it scratches a couple itches. First, it's not an all-or-nothing evolutionary gamble, but develops in steps and each step has advantages. Second, it seems pretty well rooted in neuroscience and psychology, rather than relying on handwaves like "all matter has consciousness".
Here's a couple articles from Michael Graziano, the founder (discoverer? namer?):
We all know what a forest is. But there is no "particle of forestness".
Most of the words we use don't need laws of physics and particles exclusive for them. What makes you think consciousness is more like electromagnetism than it is like a forest?
In my opinion consciousness is just an abstraction, like a football match or a forest. We have a word for these common configurations of matter, but it doesn't mean that they are fundamentally, qualitatively different from the rest of the universe.
Show me an elementary particle of forest then I can admit that consciousness needs one too :)
Consciousness seems like it should be special, but that’s not evidence that it is. Consider, after a lifetime of subjective experiences from exercise etc, a cardiac surgeon can still know far more about your heart than you do. Nobody is arguing some mysterious force is pumping blood through their bodies, but the feeling of blood pumping through your veins somehow feels primal not simple plumbing.
You can intellectually extend that to everyone else about our bodies, so why not consciousness?
Only responding to a tiny piece of your very good comment.
In the Maier/Rechtin book on system design, they spend a few pages talking about the word “Emergent”, and how “weak” it is. They says that we use the word to denote things that are almost certainly explainable, but for which we do not yet understand the mechanism of its behavior.
They use (iirc) the example of a black box system that produces a whistle noise at seemingly random moments, which observers interpret as “emergent” when reality reveals itself on closer inspection. Their point is essentially that the description “emergent” is a cop-out, and that so far nothing we’ve described as “emergent” has actually turned out to be inexplicable.
I often hear smart people saying things like “consciousness is just an emergent feature of our brains”, in a way that seems to imply “that’s that”, when in fact it’s not an explanation but rather an admission of ignorance. Admitting ignorance is fine, but ignorance is not an explanation.
I personally don’t think we’ll understand the mechanisms that underpin consciousness within our lifetimes, but I certainly don’t think consciousness is inexplicable.
The answer, of course, is that there is no consciousness: if you try to precisely define what consciousness is, you’ll end up with increasingly absurd “you know when you see it” kinds of definitions. Objectively there is no any “special” consciousness, it’s just information processing systems, simple or complex.
Is consciousness is not emergent from something - not "fully explainable in some mechanistic way" - what type of explanation for it would satisfy you? If you're not willing to brook the idea of breaking it into smaller components, then you've abdicated understanding it all - it's just an ineffable feature of the universe we'll have to live with, some shadow of the spirit world that has zero effect on any physics calculation. That seems weird to me, and lazy to boot.
Worth considering, I believe, is that many people do not have an inner voice.
For those of us who have conversations with ourselves, who can explore our consciousness throug dialog, it is easy to assume that all humans can do this.
Many cannot.
Many have no internal voice.
I find many folks are asking "where does my internal voice come from," and yet many conscious individuals lack it. "I think, therefor I am" has a different meaning when that question cannot be asked through internal monologue.
For myself, the concept that consciousness is an emergent and mechanical outcome became easier to accept after considering consciousness without monologue.
I absolutely agree, to the point of considering almost any materialistic (as well as theological) debate about consciousnesses pointless.
Just for fun, however: what if consciousness actually is just a manifestation of mass? (I've in fact heard a hypotheses it's a manifestation of gravity) Just trying to imagine consciousness of a mountain exceeding that of my own by orders of magnitude is an interesting experience. I imply that a consciousnesses of a different order does not necessarily has a function of acting or communicating in a way we could consider conscious.
Saying consciousness is emergent is definitely weird, but the problem is, so are all the other possible explanations. If you're trying to avoid supernatural explanations then emergence is the best of a baffling bad bunch IMHO.
(Then I would back this up a bit with "once you start investigating it, a lot of aspects of consciousness are quite different to what people would intuitively expect" and that makes it all a bit more feasible. E.g. saccades and the fovea are fascinating and counterintuitive, what else are we getting wrong?)
I see absolutely no evidence or suggestion that consciousness is anything else other than the summation of changes that happened in our brain in combination with the input devices we naturally have. You have decades worth of changes that occurred to get you to the point now and it's very clear and easy to see how much _less_ conscious you were when you were younger.
As much as I'd like to believe that consciousness is unique, I don't think we have to look that far to show otherwise. There's an abundance of mental disorders that affect consciousness. Take for example something as (relatively) mundane as ADHD. Anyone with it that has a reasonable amount of insight will tell you that they are almost entirely driven by attention, which is the crux of ADHD.
I'd argue that "consciousness" is the illusion that's created from attention, which you're ultimately a slave to. While I don't have empirical evidence, considering how difficult it would be, I believe that attention is the heart of what we consider consciousness. What your attention focuses on is built on nature and nurture. Your attention is grabbed by what you're "interested" in and what you deem is important. It guides your thoughts, your perception, your internal representations, your attitude, your decisions, etc.
The illusion is that you have control over your attention. Again, anyone with ADHD and insight will conclude that you don't. If your mind will is a computer, then attention is the cursor that guides interactions with it. However, we're not in "control" of it since basically what we know of as the self is the mouse cursor of the mind. I don't think we move the mouse; I think that's the illusion.
Me typing this is simply a product of my attention and it leading me to the conclusion that I should type this because this topic and the representations I've constructed internally are significant to me as a result of my education, life experiences, genetics, etc.
At least, that's my opinion. I definitely don't want to come off as an authority on consciousness. I don't think anyone is (yet). Despite my view, I do believe we can uncover the mystery of consciousness from mere perseverance, even if consciousness is emergent.
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Someone has already proposed a thought experiment, but I propose an alternative. Imagine all humans (and living creatures in general) as cells and neurons of an even greater being. What if what we understand as the universe is actually just the composition of a larger mind? As cells, would we comprehend or know that? Or would we assume we're independent beings? The infrastructure we build, the roads connecting clumps of societies, the internet connecting all humans together, etc.
Who is to say that we're not simply building more complicated versions of what we would consider synapses between neurons, nervous systems, circulatory systems, etc? Perhaps the progression of humanity, and the universe at large, is actually just a small organ during the gestation or development phase of a much larger being and we are completely unaware?
One notion that comes to mind is fractals. We see it everywhere in nature. What if consciousness does emerge from complexity and what we consider reality is just a single resolution of a much more complex and larger fractal?
You're not even wrong, it's logically impossible to derive temperature from velocity either because temperature is defined as a fundamental attribute of matter. You can only quantitatively connect them, and such connection is seen as explanation in mechanistic way.
Out of all the crazy theories about electron my favorite is single electron universe. That all the electrons and positrons are actually single particle that that goes back and forth in time, and positron are exactly the same as electrons just going in the opposite direction in time.
It neatly explains what and why is antimatter and why all particles of given kind are exactly the same. Although it's a hard sell because it predicts that all of the matter-antimatter symmetry breaking is not intrinsic or even spontaneous.
Also it make hard to wrap your head around how antimatter could form any macroscopic objects while going back in time. Or how it can behave exactly like matter while going back in time.
A while back I read 'Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind' ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41571759-conscious )
which attempts to promote panpsychism. It does a pretty good job at exploring the curious nature of consciousness, but panpsychism I think is just at the level of 'woo'. It makes the case that because we are having trouble with fully understanding what consciousness is, we must fully engage in exploring ideas like panpsychism. While I generally support coming up with all kinds of ideas and exploring them, the proponents of this idea seem a little too convinced it's a real thing based on zero evidence, they promote quite a bit through seemingly scientific "speak" but use words like "may" "might" "possible" etc to exploit the basic fact that we simply don't know yet and want to present it as a credible possibility.
1) Even if electrons have consciousness, why should it be linked to our consciousness?
2) Why is decision making the essence of consciousness?
The Schroedinger equation is just a model, not reality. There doesn't even have to be an undecided state in reality. But even if the universe is conscious and decides in every moment, that doesn't explain our consciousness. If everything is conscious, in an ever increasing density why don't we have several consciousnesses in our head? Why is our stomach not conscious?
And even if we are not free to make decisions, we could still be conscious in the same way that we watch sporting events without intervening. Actually I would argue that we never decide. We always 'choose' the most preferred option that deterministically depends on our state of mind. And yet, we are conscious.
We do have several consciousnesses in our head, which end up acting as a collective and then the left brain interpreter post-rationalizes the behavior as if a single mind is at work. That’s why we act against our own decisions so often.
You can see this demonstrated with people with split brain syndrome, where the brain halves are unable to directly communicate and you can trick them out by confronting the speaking left brain with conflicting actions by the right brain. The left brain will invent an explanation on the spot.
A fun speculation about similar things is found in the Neal Stephenson novel "Anathem," where consciousness is a manifestation of the many-worlds interpretation of QM.
The notion in the novel is that most "forks" are imperceptible, but forks in a brain result in outsized impacts on the physical world due to the tight interconnectivity of its neurons / circuitry (i.e. the normally minuscule difference in electron spin could cause an entirely different neural pathway to be followed, resulting in the conscious entity taking different actions and thus greatly impacting the world in tangible ways). It is the susceptibility to this cascading effect that somehow results in "consciousness."
It's probably baloney, but it's a fun read with some interesting things to consider :)
I personally like roger penrose's theory (hypothesis?) of orchestrated objective reduction of consciousness (Orch-OR). He stipulates that in evolution of the quantum state of a system the collapse of wave function IS a form of proto-consciousness. Essentially the he is saying that WF collapse is how a system becomes 'aware' of the choice and consciousness emerges from there onwards. A Brain of sufficient/right complexity is a connectionist structure that is responsible for perceiving and/or translating it.
What he's missing is the agent responsible for incorporating in the human/animal brain but some interesting candidates have come forwards like microtubules in neurons. But it is all highly speculative, though, there have been some advances in proving that biology is not too wet-warm-noisy for quantum state to persist without decoehrence for instance.. photosynthesis.
Penrose's stuff is very interesting, and I always enjoy hearing him talk about it. But for me it is a soup with too many ingredients. Better to look at the ingredients separately, for example, the idea of microtubules maintaining coherent quantum information. That already is very interesting, and would make a good meal.
I've been trying to formulate thoughts I have on consciousness that make sense in my head, but I haven't been able to communicate it effectively.
Basically, why is consciousness always attached to the same physical body? Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? How does "my" consciousness know to come back into "my" brain whenever I lose it (through sleep or injury, etc).
The answer that I lean toward is that there is no such thing as you or me. There is only one consciousness and it is merely being filtered through each living (or perhaps nonliving) being in containerized modules.
So, to "me", it feels like I'm experiencing my own consciousness but in reality everyone is the same "me". You are me, I am you, etc, we are simply filtering consciousness through different atomic arrangements.
For example, let's say you read about a criminal who does a terrible thing and you can't imagine yourself ever doing that. But in reality, it is the same "you", only that your consciousness has been filtered through a different arragement of atoms that has caused that "module" to act that way. It is the same YOU who committed that crime, all it took was a different filtering device to make you act that way.
Anyway, that's kind of what I'm thinking. I'm sure it's not an original thought, but I don't know what kind of philosophy this is called other than "one consciosness".
Intuitively we would think if an animal can move, meaning it has locomotion, it is NOT because it is intrinsic to all matter (i.e rocks), rather it is because there is some bio-mechanical reason for it. Scientist could figure out how things moved and the underlying cellular processes to obtain energy in order to do it. A proponent of this article then might say that all matter is in constant motion. Then we are not talking about the same things. We are talking about directed motion to obtain food or some goal for survival. Atoms are not alive so they don't need to survive and do not have goal-oriented motion. But then those same proponents would list off how electrons move according to laws that behave similar to living creatures etc. so its some intrinsic thing. You can't win with those people. They will always have a response framed in some narrow definition that does not have any basis for what we are thinking of what locomotion means. That's a long metaphor.
I thought of one more but it's less wordy and children can understand it. If you take a lego, with enough of them in a particular arrangement...you can create a wheel of sorts so it rolls. Legos don't roll unto themselves but are necessary parts to create the wheel-like behavior. Legos are boxy so they can't roll by themselves obviously and yet they can roll when put together in a certain way. This concept relates to nature in that atoms are building blocks to create properties of things in a particular arrangement. It's easier to understand because we have no magic bias surrounding legos or sense of purpose or importance in coming to that conclusion.
The mind-body problem is an interesting philosophical debate. It would be funny if our ancestors had been on to something the whole time with the various forms of panpsychism that have occurred throughout history. We tend to overestimate our own ingenuity and heavily discount the intelligence and natural intuition of the past. Not saying this is a credible theory, just an interesting reoccurring idea throughout human history.
My favorite approach[1] to the mind–body problem is a recent one, placing the interaction between the mind and body at actual primacy. Neither the perceived nor the perceiver can exist without the process of perceiving. However absurd, the things related can be seen as derivative of the relationship itself.
Resonates with zen, as famously espoused by Alan Watts[2]: “How does the thing put a process into action. Obviously it can’t. But we always insist that there is this subject called the knower. And without a knower there can’t be knowing. Well that’s just a grammatical rule, it isn’t the rule of nature. In nature there’s just knowing.” Also said[3]: “The grammatical illusion is that all verbs have to have subjects.”
IIT is pure sophistry - some years ago Scott Aaronson showed that using their definition of potential for consciousness electronic devices employing certain kinds of algebraic error-correction codes have it - meant as a reductio-ad-absurdum of IIT, apparently its promoters have decided to try and own the absurdity.
In other news - nautil.us is an utter garbage chute of an outlet, the new-science-journalism equivalent of British tabloids and I fully expect them to publish a psuedoscientific apologia for astrology or an evolutionary theory supporting the existence of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster - post-Darwinnian cryptozoology anyone ?
Electrons may as well be <insert anything> as long as we cannot observe it. This is not interesting because the Occam's razor shaves it off instantly.
A much more tantalizing hypothesis (also unverifiable by construction) would be to assume presence of a metaphysical being which alters the probabilities of quantum processes ever so slightly as to have a macroscopic effect, but is careful enough to never do it for processes under direct experimental observation.
One can invent a number of such undetectable constructs, it's a good entertainment, and does show the limits of the scientific method. Practical applications of these are nil, though.
Discussions of consciousness tend to frustrate me a bit. So many otherwise smart people, for some reason, simply do not understand the hard problem of consciousness. They'll say things like "well, consciousness is just a given pattern of physical stuff" but they do not realize what to me is an obvious objection - to say that consciousness is equivalent to a given pattern of physical stuff does not explain why that pattern of physical stuff is not simply present without any consciousness associated with it. I can imagine a being that is physically identical to a human in every way, but is not conscious - there is no reason to think that intelligent behavior requires consciousness. So what is the difference between such a being and a conscious human, if the two are physically identical?
From a logical standpoint, questioning whether Consciousness "exists" is ludicrous. Consciousness is the foundation of our capability to observe the world around us and make conclusions about it. Protons, electrons, atoms, molecules and other phenomena do not exist outside of our Consciousness and we cannot prove absolutely anything about the world that is not a part of our Consciousness. Therefore, if something is to be questioned, it is our strange desire to prove the existence of the only thing we are directly experiencing all the time - Consciousness. It's like a computer program becoming aware of itself and trying to find that awareness in the source code. It's not there.
When I used to commute via mass transit, my train load of people would all rush down the platform, into a plaza, and down only one escalator. You had people who would rush forward, people who would take a steady pace, and people who would hang back. I often times looked at the flow of people and it seemed to me it was extremely similar to a flow of particles.
There are a lot of different philosophical positions with regard to the mind-body problem, but very few attempts at a testable scientific theory about how consciousness works. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is such an attempt.
We can not yet measure consciousness. We can not say for certain, as an example, whether a brain or AI that we design experiences it’s own consciousness or not. And yet, they are made as all the same particles as you and I.
We can say that consciousness is something to do with the links in our brain, but how many times can I slice a brain before it is not conscious? Does a brain sliced down into single neurons not experience the world as a billion separate individuals? If I were to reconstruct the brain from its individual parts, would those individuals feel as though they had died as their consciousnesses merged?
I’m willing to still accept the traditional view that consciousness is a special sauce. That when we reproduce, it’s something that we can fork, but it is not common in the universe.
And I think that the true litmus test to the nature of consciousness is to effectively kill someone by freezing them (so that they are actually dead in the sense there is zero electrical activity) and then successfully bring them back to a conscious state. Then you will have paused a consciousness, and yet it did not leave. I do not think it’s possible. I think something like that ruins the special sauce and the resulting experiment may be able to survive (breath, react at a motor level), but effectively does not live a conscious life.
> I think something like that ruins the special sauce and the resulting experiment may be able to survive (breath, react at a motor level), but effectively does not live a conscious life.
But if we have no way to measure consciousness (and arguably, we can't, if it's truly a "special sauce"), you can't prove whether or not this reanimated creature is simply a mechanically moving shell of what was, a la every zombie movie, or the same person, or something in between.
I have taken multiple university courses in theoretical physics, in artificial intelligence and in neuroscience, including on the topic of consciousness.
I can directly observe my own consciousness and I can tell that without a doubt it can not be explained by current physics and "complexity". It is completely different in kind.
If you believe that consciousness could arise just from complexity and information processing, then you are frankly mistaken. Whether you lack a consciousness or just the introspective ability to perceive it... or I suppose a knowledge of physics.
Now beyond saying "there is something going on", things quickly become much more difficult. Pan-psychism is a worthwhile avenue to pursue. If there is some phenomenon going on at a macrolevel, then we do expect it to be made up things going on at a microlevel. Some kind of consciousness or proto-consciousness. But am somewhat pessimistic. We don't really know what we are even looking for, so how can we expect to find it?
The attempts to connect wave-function collapse with consciousness are unconvincing to me. It seems basically like tying together two things we don't understand with each other based on... not a lot.
Once you take this path, you can make up anything that you like. There's no way to test it. Except, I suppose, based on how you feel about it, how well societies work whose members believe it, and so on.
I agree with this. There are similar arguments that you cannot prove reality is real. Sure, but how does that help us solve the energy crisis or world hunger? It is philosophical musical chairs. Aristotle and Plato investigated how to live a better life.
[+] [-] pontus|5 years ago|reply
Saying things like "Consciousness is emergent" or "Consciousness is just a side effect of information processing" seems to miss the point. I'm definitely comfortable saying that consciousness is correlated with complexity and information processing, but claiming that it is fully explainable in some mechanistic way sounds suspect to me.
It would sort of be like saying that since large electric charges have only been observed in nuclei with proportionally large mass, then somehow charge is just a manifestation of mass. When we go further it turns out that charge is fundamentally distinct from mass, in fact so distinct that we have to add an entirely new attribute to fundamental particles. The same story goes with spin. Once you have spin and electric charge you get magnetic moments. Ultimately the reason why a magnet is magnetic is because all of these subatomic particles conspire in just the right way to have a macroscopic effect. Of course, not all materials have the property of being magnetic even though they all are made from protons and electrons, but some materials are.
To me, trying to say that consciousness is just something emergent is like saying that electric charge is emergent from mass. I would not be surprised if some type of proto consciousness would be needed in order to understand how macroscopic objects like human brains are self aware, have sensations, etc.
[+] [-] knzhou|5 years ago|reply
It sounds suspect to me too, but the reason the idea is appealing is that it's worked fantastically for hundreds of similar phenomena. To vastly oversimplify thousands of years of philosophy, for most of human history the default position has been that every idea had to be reified into some metaphysical essence.
What is the essence that makes a dog a dog? That makes bread nourishing but rocks not? That makes rocks solid? That makes fire hot? That makes falling objects seek Earth? Again and again, we've found simple physical explanations for these puzzles, that once were regarded as just as inexplicable as consciousness. Indeed, consciousness is now the last essence that survives, and that's why some bet it'll go the same way as all the rest. "But this one is different", indeed, and every single time so far that argument has been wrong.
[+] [-] hackinthebochs|5 years ago|reply
On the contrary, I feel like those who think we need some fundamental consciousness property is missing the point. We expect to find some objective third-person property that is the substrate of consciousness because a phenomenon that seems so unlike every other property should have a fundamental basis. But the mistake is expecting to analyze consciousness in the same way we can analyze other objective properties of physics.
The only things we know to be conscious are complex macro-scale objects with highly complex and rare internal organizations. In fact, the only things we truly know to be conscious are ourselves. It seems to be fundamentally subjective; it is not something to be directly witnessed as a third-person observer. So our investigation should start there. What we want is a theory for deriving organizational subjectivity from a non-subjective substrate. What might this look like? A system with subjectivity will need to recognize the external from the internal. It needs an egocentric mode of representation with the ability to represent itself and its dispositions and intentional stances, as well as states to represent the external world. My intuition tells me such a system has a non-zero "inner life", i.e. there is something it is like to be it. But I see no reason to think "fundamental" subjectivity, whatever that is, could do any explanatory work here. The causal and representative power is in the organization.
[+] [-] jdmichal|5 years ago|reply
Here's a couple articles from Michael Graziano, the founder (discoverer? namer?):
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/opinion/sunday/are-we-rea...
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/how-cons...
[+] [-] ajuc|5 years ago|reply
Most of the words we use don't need laws of physics and particles exclusive for them. What makes you think consciousness is more like electromagnetism than it is like a forest?
In my opinion consciousness is just an abstraction, like a football match or a forest. We have a word for these common configurations of matter, but it doesn't mean that they are fundamentally, qualitatively different from the rest of the universe.
Show me an elementary particle of forest then I can admit that consciousness needs one too :)
[+] [-] Retric|5 years ago|reply
You can intellectually extend that to everyone else about our bodies, so why not consciousness?
[+] [-] gen220|5 years ago|reply
In the Maier/Rechtin book on system design, they spend a few pages talking about the word “Emergent”, and how “weak” it is. They says that we use the word to denote things that are almost certainly explainable, but for which we do not yet understand the mechanism of its behavior.
They use (iirc) the example of a black box system that produces a whistle noise at seemingly random moments, which observers interpret as “emergent” when reality reveals itself on closer inspection. Their point is essentially that the description “emergent” is a cop-out, and that so far nothing we’ve described as “emergent” has actually turned out to be inexplicable.
I often hear smart people saying things like “consciousness is just an emergent feature of our brains”, in a way that seems to imply “that’s that”, when in fact it’s not an explanation but rather an admission of ignorance. Admitting ignorance is fine, but ignorance is not an explanation.
I personally don’t think we’ll understand the mechanisms that underpin consciousness within our lifetimes, but I certainly don’t think consciousness is inexplicable.
[+] [-] vl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dTal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sitkack|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dleslie|5 years ago|reply
For those of us who have conversations with ourselves, who can explore our consciousness throug dialog, it is easy to assume that all humans can do this.
Many cannot.
Many have no internal voice.
I find many folks are asking "where does my internal voice come from," and yet many conscious individuals lack it. "I think, therefor I am" has a different meaning when that question cannot be asked through internal monologue.
For myself, the concept that consciousness is an emergent and mechanical outcome became easier to accept after considering consciousness without monologue.
[+] [-] qwerty456127|5 years ago|reply
Just for fun, however: what if consciousness actually is just a manifestation of mass? (I've in fact heard a hypotheses it's a manifestation of gravity) Just trying to imagine consciousness of a mountain exceeding that of my own by orders of magnitude is an interesting experience. I imply that a consciousnesses of a different order does not necessarily has a function of acting or communicating in a way we could consider conscious.
[+] [-] codeulike|5 years ago|reply
(Then I would back this up a bit with "once you start investigating it, a lot of aspects of consciousness are quite different to what people would intuitively expect" and that makes it all a bit more feasible. E.g. saccades and the fovea are fascinating and counterintuitive, what else are we getting wrong?)
[+] [-] badrabbit|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Madmallard|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SideburnsOfDoom|5 years ago|reply
What's the alternative? If it's not "fully explainable in some mechanistic way" then you need a mystical component to the explanation?
That is itself suspect, exceedingly suspect, to many people.
[+] [-] nvrspyx|5 years ago|reply
I'd argue that "consciousness" is the illusion that's created from attention, which you're ultimately a slave to. While I don't have empirical evidence, considering how difficult it would be, I believe that attention is the heart of what we consider consciousness. What your attention focuses on is built on nature and nurture. Your attention is grabbed by what you're "interested" in and what you deem is important. It guides your thoughts, your perception, your internal representations, your attitude, your decisions, etc.
The illusion is that you have control over your attention. Again, anyone with ADHD and insight will conclude that you don't. If your mind will is a computer, then attention is the cursor that guides interactions with it. However, we're not in "control" of it since basically what we know of as the self is the mouse cursor of the mind. I don't think we move the mouse; I think that's the illusion.
Me typing this is simply a product of my attention and it leading me to the conclusion that I should type this because this topic and the representations I've constructed internally are significant to me as a result of my education, life experiences, genetics, etc.
At least, that's my opinion. I definitely don't want to come off as an authority on consciousness. I don't think anyone is (yet). Despite my view, I do believe we can uncover the mystery of consciousness from mere perseverance, even if consciousness is emergent.
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Someone has already proposed a thought experiment, but I propose an alternative. Imagine all humans (and living creatures in general) as cells and neurons of an even greater being. What if what we understand as the universe is actually just the composition of a larger mind? As cells, would we comprehend or know that? Or would we assume we're independent beings? The infrastructure we build, the roads connecting clumps of societies, the internet connecting all humans together, etc.
Who is to say that we're not simply building more complicated versions of what we would consider synapses between neurons, nervous systems, circulatory systems, etc? Perhaps the progression of humanity, and the universe at large, is actually just a small organ during the gestation or development phase of a much larger being and we are completely unaware?
One notion that comes to mind is fractals. We see it everywhere in nature. What if consciousness does emerge from complexity and what we consider reality is just a single resolution of a much more complex and larger fractal?
[+] [-] comboy|5 years ago|reply
It may be the best book I've ever read.
[+] [-] rixed|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GoblinSlayer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotty79|5 years ago|reply
It neatly explains what and why is antimatter and why all particles of given kind are exactly the same. Although it's a hard sell because it predicts that all of the matter-antimatter symmetry breaking is not intrinsic or even spontaneous.
Also it make hard to wrap your head around how antimatter could form any macroscopic objects while going back in time. Or how it can behave exactly like matter while going back in time.
[+] [-] keithnz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toohotatopic|5 years ago|reply
1) Even if electrons have consciousness, why should it be linked to our consciousness?
2) Why is decision making the essence of consciousness?
The Schroedinger equation is just a model, not reality. There doesn't even have to be an undecided state in reality. But even if the universe is conscious and decides in every moment, that doesn't explain our consciousness. If everything is conscious, in an ever increasing density why don't we have several consciousnesses in our head? Why is our stomach not conscious?
And even if we are not free to make decisions, we could still be conscious in the same way that we watch sporting events without intervening. Actually I would argue that we never decide. We always 'choose' the most preferred option that deterministically depends on our state of mind. And yet, we are conscious.
[+] [-] Joeri|5 years ago|reply
You can see this demonstrated with people with split brain syndrome, where the brain halves are unable to directly communicate and you can trick them out by confronting the speaking left brain with conflicting actions by the right brain. The left brain will invent an explanation on the spot.
https://physics.weber.edu/carroll/honors/split_brain.htm
[+] [-] JeremyNT|5 years ago|reply
The notion in the novel is that most "forks" are imperceptible, but forks in a brain result in outsized impacts on the physical world due to the tight interconnectivity of its neurons / circuitry (i.e. the normally minuscule difference in electron spin could cause an entirely different neural pathway to be followed, resulting in the conscious entity taking different actions and thus greatly impacting the world in tangible ways). It is the susceptibility to this cascading effect that somehow results in "consciousness."
It's probably baloney, but it's a fun read with some interesting things to consider :)
[+] [-] mathgenius|5 years ago|reply
Maybe.
> Why is our stomach not conscious?
When I am hungry it certainly seems like my stomach is conscious. Indeed, they have found neurons in the digestive tract.
[+] [-] DesiLurker|5 years ago|reply
What he's missing is the agent responsible for incorporating in the human/animal brain but some interesting candidates have come forwards like microtubules in neurons. But it is all highly speculative, though, there have been some advances in proving that biology is not too wet-warm-noisy for quantum state to persist without decoehrence for instance.. photosynthesis.
[+] [-] mathgenius|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blacksqr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixQuarks|5 years ago|reply
Basically, why is consciousness always attached to the same physical body? Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? How does "my" consciousness know to come back into "my" brain whenever I lose it (through sleep or injury, etc).
The answer that I lean toward is that there is no such thing as you or me. There is only one consciousness and it is merely being filtered through each living (or perhaps nonliving) being in containerized modules.
So, to "me", it feels like I'm experiencing my own consciousness but in reality everyone is the same "me". You are me, I am you, etc, we are simply filtering consciousness through different atomic arrangements.
For example, let's say you read about a criminal who does a terrible thing and you can't imagine yourself ever doing that. But in reality, it is the same "you", only that your consciousness has been filtered through a different arragement of atoms that has caused that "module" to act that way. It is the same YOU who committed that crime, all it took was a different filtering device to make you act that way.
Anyway, that's kind of what I'm thinking. I'm sure it's not an original thought, but I don't know what kind of philosophy this is called other than "one consciosness".
[+] [-] sebringj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sebringj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enoreyes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] undershirt|5 years ago|reply
Resonates with zen, as famously espoused by Alan Watts[2]: “How does the thing put a process into action. Obviously it can’t. But we always insist that there is this subject called the knower. And without a knower there can’t be knowing. Well that’s just a grammatical rule, it isn’t the rule of nature. In nature there’s just knowing.” Also said[3]: “The grammatical illusion is that all verbs have to have subjects.”
[1]: https://www.magic-flight.com/pub/uvsm_1/imc_01.htm
[2]: https://www.alanwatts.org/1-1-2-not-what-should-be-pt-2
[3]: https://www.alanwatts.org/1-1-11-limits-of-language-pt-1/
[+] [-] seemslegit|5 years ago|reply
IIT is pure sophistry - some years ago Scott Aaronson showed that using their definition of potential for consciousness electronic devices employing certain kinds of algebraic error-correction codes have it - meant as a reductio-ad-absurdum of IIT, apparently its promoters have decided to try and own the absurdity.
In other news - nautil.us is an utter garbage chute of an outlet, the new-science-journalism equivalent of British tabloids and I fully expect them to publish a psuedoscientific apologia for astrology or an evolutionary theory supporting the existence of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster - post-Darwinnian cryptozoology anyone ?
[+] [-] nine_k|5 years ago|reply
A much more tantalizing hypothesis (also unverifiable by construction) would be to assume presence of a metaphysical being which alters the probabilities of quantum processes ever so slightly as to have a macroscopic effect, but is careful enough to never do it for processes under direct experimental observation.
One can invent a number of such undetectable constructs, it's a good entertainment, and does show the limits of the scientific method. Practical applications of these are nil, though.
[+] [-] robbiep|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axguscbklp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peter_vukovic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joncrane|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kendallpark|5 years ago|reply
Nature Opinion article: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.44
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory
[+] [-] aetherspawn|5 years ago|reply
We can say that consciousness is something to do with the links in our brain, but how many times can I slice a brain before it is not conscious? Does a brain sliced down into single neurons not experience the world as a billion separate individuals? If I were to reconstruct the brain from its individual parts, would those individuals feel as though they had died as their consciousnesses merged?
I’m willing to still accept the traditional view that consciousness is a special sauce. That when we reproduce, it’s something that we can fork, but it is not common in the universe.
And I think that the true litmus test to the nature of consciousness is to effectively kill someone by freezing them (so that they are actually dead in the sense there is zero electrical activity) and then successfully bring them back to a conscious state. Then you will have paused a consciousness, and yet it did not leave. I do not think it’s possible. I think something like that ruins the special sauce and the resulting experiment may be able to survive (breath, react at a motor level), but effectively does not live a conscious life.
[+] [-] pc86|5 years ago|reply
But if we have no way to measure consciousness (and arguably, we can't, if it's truly a "special sauce"), you can't prove whether or not this reanimated creature is simply a mechanically moving shell of what was, a la every zombie movie, or the same person, or something in between.
[+] [-] im3w1l|5 years ago|reply
I can directly observe my own consciousness and I can tell that without a doubt it can not be explained by current physics and "complexity". It is completely different in kind.
If you believe that consciousness could arise just from complexity and information processing, then you are frankly mistaken. Whether you lack a consciousness or just the introspective ability to perceive it... or I suppose a knowledge of physics.
Now beyond saying "there is something going on", things quickly become much more difficult. Pan-psychism is a worthwhile avenue to pursue. If there is some phenomenon going on at a macrolevel, then we do expect it to be made up things going on at a microlevel. Some kind of consciousness or proto-consciousness. But am somewhat pessimistic. We don't really know what we are even looking for, so how can we expect to find it?
The attempts to connect wave-function collapse with consciousness are unconvincing to me. It seems basically like tying together two things we don't understand with each other based on... not a lot.
[+] [-] mirimir|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheUndead96|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisCinelli|5 years ago|reply
It is hard to explain if you do not want to consider that our counsciuness may trascend our mortal existence.
[+] [-] Zigurd|5 years ago|reply