Consciousness, A Discussion

Discussion in 'Philosophy and Religion' started by Meagain, Oct 3, 2015.

  1. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    I started this thread as a place to discuss consciousness specifically.

    I'll post some things tomorrow.
     
  2. Joshua Tree

    Joshua Tree Remain In Light

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    I like the idea of epiphenomenal qualia, as proposed by Jackson.

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/

    The argument contained in this passage may be put like this:
    (1) Mary has all the physical information concerning human color vision before her release.
    (2) But there is some information about human color vision that she does not have before her release.
    Therefore
    (3) Not all information is physical information.
     
  3. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    I emiigrated from another site because our discussions of consciousness are more pertinent here. I'lll import the discussion from that site to this one, so that Guerillabedlam or others can respond.

    Consciousness is awareness of experience--our most immediate apprehension of reality. The problem that it poses for evolution is what survival value does it have? The theory of natural selection posits that our basic purpose is to survive and reproduce. How is this better served by conscious humans than by zombies? On the other hand, the fact that we have such a faculty is important theologically, because if we didn't, we wouldn't be aware of our existence or of the "great big wonderful world we live in". Atheist and neuroscientist Sam Harris acknowledges that scientists don't understand consciousness. "The idea that brains produce consciousness is little more than an article of faith among scientists at present and there are many reasons to believe that the methods of science will be insufficient to either prove or disprove it." The End of Faith, p. 208). Harris is also impressed by research showing that much of our behavior is autonomic and that our decisions are often made before we're aware of them. So what is consciousness good for? As neuroscientists Crick and Koch asked "Why does our brain not consist simply of a series of specialized zombie systems?" Neuroscientist David Eggerman speculates that consciousness is the "CEO" of the neural network , making higher-level decisions and setting new tasks. But why would even that require subjective awareness? Philosopher-mathematican Alfred North Whitehead speculated that "proto-consciousness" exists in all matter. It might be that consciousness is simply a fortuitous by-product that just happened to emerge as our brains became bigger and more complicated. If so, the development of consciousness must be viewed as a rather fortuitous outcome of the "blind" process of evolution. Without it, no one would know that it even happened!
     
  4. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Quote: GurrillaBedlam
    Several answers seem blatantly obvious in relation to why consciousness would be preferable over being zombies in regards to evolution. Some that come to mind are Having more developed consciousness can benefit a species in allowing it to better be aware of predators/prey. In regards to reproduction, consciousness can help mates select traits or qualities that they are seeking to make fit offspring. But these responses only consider survival value in how you have posed the question and only this aspect of consciousness you mentioned.


    I really don't think that is the significant obstacle in regards to evolution addressing consciousness that McKenna is speaking to. I don't know the surrounding context of the McKenna quote but I assume he is perhaps addressing this from at least 1 of 2 different angles.

    1) that there has not been a consciousness 'control center' found in the brain. So unlike, say the eye, which has thought to be a series of gradual steps to reach it's level of 'perfection' that we view it as today by evolutionary biologists, which suggests theoretically we could find all the graduated intermediates of the evolution of the eye, there is no parallel location of consciousness. I attempted to correlate, what I'll call second tier variables, such as brain size and quantity of neurons to consciousness in my previous post, but admittedly it is a bit presumptuous and a grasping effort by scientific standards.

    2) The other is that When many people are talking about consciousness, they often are meaning something more complex than that definition you offered for us. I get the impression that when many people speak of consciousness, particularly coming from a mystical or religious angle, McKenna most likely the former, they often treat consciousness as having this aspect of wholly other. That there is a feeling that some if not all that constitutes their consciousness resides somewhere else besides between their ears and head to toe. I think this aspect is the true riddle of consciousness, I can't really relate to some claims people make in regards to it but I understand the sensation that my thinking mind often will seem disparate, from the rest of my cohesive person. That voice of 'I' as if some region of mind is controlling the rest of my being through some sort of interface or something.
     
  5. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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  6. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Thanks!
     
  7. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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  8. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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  9. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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  10. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Okiefreak, on 04 Oct 2015 - 09:50 AM, said:[​IMG]
    Joshua Tree: I think these are important points, and basic for a meaningful discussion of consciousness. In earlier discussion (supra), I defined consciousness initially a "awareness of experience--our most immediate apprehension of reality. Guerrillabedlam ( whom I'll nickname GB) said that this was simplistic, and I agree. I then gave a more complete definition:"I think the kind of consciousness that is involved when neuroscientists like Chalmers speak of it being a "hard problem of consciousness" is phenomenal awareness, subjective experience or sentience--the ability to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. Consciousness, in this sense, refers to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal side of our mental lives--what is it like to experience a sunset or a symphony,or to contemplate the nature of consciousness. By this definition, qualia are central to the discussion. GB asked me if qualia and consciousness were the same. I think they're almost the same. phenomenal consciousness is made up of qualia-- qualia being the subjective experience of consciousness that's unique in relation to a given stimuls. It's important to note that some writers deny or dismiss the importance of qualia. The philosopher Daniel Dennett, one of the "Four Horsemen" who has written a 511 page book entitled Consciousness Explained, is one of those. Dennett seems to be influenced by the postivist tradition in philosophy and behaviorism in psychology, which regard such concepts as too messy and untestable to bother with. So his book is full of interesting information pertinent to consciousness, but it's very much like that lady Jackson talks about who spend her life in a black and white world studying the color red--measuring light frequencies etc., but missing the subjective experience that I consider central and Chalmers describes as the hard problem. Here are some articles that I think are good background to these issues. http://enlightenedworldview.com/blog/?title=phenomenal-consciousness-and-the-cause&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
    1http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Qualia; http://psychology.wi...com/wiki/Qualia
     
  11. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    I can't make any sense out of the Mary example given. I suppose we are to assume that Mary has never experienced color, so how can she have any idea of what the terms red, and blue signify? In addition she has never seen any colors, so how can she have all the physical information? The black and white TV does not transmit certain visible light waves so although she may know that there are a wide spectrum of differing wave lengths and some individuals can sense more of them then she has been permitted, she has no way of knowing what the experience of these other waves is.

    That doesn't mean the experience of color isn't related to certain physical properties.

    So I don't really follow this argument.
     
  12. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    The point is that there's more to color than the physical properties, and that missing dimension is what most of us would consider to be the most important. This doesn't mean that we should blame Mary for making the most of what she has, and she can make important contributions to out understanding of color by telling us about the physical information. But we wouldn't have a complete understanding of color by relying on the accounts of a color blind person. And that is precisely what we get from some writers on consciousness who dismiss qualia as irrelevant because it's fuzzy and unmeasurable by standard empirical techniques. Daniel Dennet is like a color blind person trying to make sense of color. His effort to understand Consciousness is commendable and contains valuable information, but he is fundamentally inadequate, and worst of all advances his way as the only valid approach and implies that those who don't see it that way are fuzzy minded. As I said before, consciousness is awareness of experience--our most immediate apprehension of reality. It's what makes me aware that I exist--essentially what Descartes was saying by "I think, therefore I am". I'd modify that a bit to say "I experience, therefore I am." No amount of studies by well-credentialed experts based on mountains of peer reviewed research could convince me that this phenomenon doesn't exist or is irrelevant, and Dennett's attempt to do just that considerably lowered my estimation of him.
     
  13. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    I was about to be quick to respond to MeAgain's post in a similar vein but as I was writing, I realized there was a subtlety in his post that struck me in a borderline profound way. (Perhaps it was the qualia :) )

    The color blind person is dealing with a physical deficit, apparently this is not the case with Mary and she is a color scientist. The absurdity of electing a color scientist who has been trapped in a black and white room her whole life aside, where along the lines is it that Mary gains this new information to complete her knowledge of color that is not physical? Presumably this occurs due to her stepping outside the room to let's say be greeted by a red light, but this is an interaction of light hitting her retina being translated by her visual cortex, so where does the non-physical interaction come into play?
     
  14. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    In any discussion of consciousness we must first decide what exactly we're discussing. So I'll offer the following:

    Consciousness is not reactivity.
    Reactivity means that I can react to my own physical being, or the environment without being conscious of having done so. While typing this sentence I may scratch my butt or look out the window while gathering my thoughts without being conscious of having done so. I may react to a sound in the other room or a smell in the air by wrinkling my nose and never know it. My eyes may shift up to twenty times a second as I scan the environment and yet I am conscious of only one fixed image.

    Consciousness is a small part of our mental experience.
    We can not be conscious of what we are not conscious of. When walking down a mountain path my eyes register all of the light waves in their field of view and my feet pick their way through the stones, sticks, and rugged terrain I am traversing, but lost in thoughts about the nature of consciousness I am not conscious of the many mental adjustments I am making so that I don't fall, stumble, or loose my way. I may be following blazes on the trees but if you ask me how many I passed or where the last one was, I may be at a complete loss to tell you how many there were, where they were located or even what the trail looked like around the last bend.

    Consciousness is not continuous.
    We can not be conscious of the time that we are not conscious. The firing of our neural circuits takes place in a finite time. There will always be an interval between those firings and we can not claim to be conscious of that interval as it may occur in a mere millisecond, one after another and at each interval no consciousness is present. Our consciousness is constantly interrupted by a series of unconscious states.

    Consciousness is not stored sensory input due to experience.
    You have many stored experiences available to you, but not all of them are due to conscious attention. If certain items on your desk are rearranged without your knowledge you may immediately know that something is wrong when you reach for the stapler and it isn't there. But if you were previously asked the location of every item on your desk you may not have been able to correctly place each and every one, even though you look at them every day as you never consciously noticed their location.
    Additionally if you think of the last time you hit a ball, or climbed a wall, you do not "see" an image of what it actually looked to do so, instead you have an image of yourself hitting the ball or climbing a wall. Your direct observations are not present in your conscious recall at all. You don't feel the movement of your muscles, or the wind in your face, or the ball striking the bat, you see a recreation of the event not the experience of the event itself.

    Consciousness is not necessary for learning.
    Pavlovian conditioning is the linking of a behavior to a repeated unconscious stimuli. If a bell is rung each time food is given to you, you will eventually come to unconsciously associate the bell ringing with the arrival of food. However, if you are told that a bell will be rung each time you get food and it is then rung, no association will be formed. In this case consciousness precludes learning.

    The learning of complex skills is similar, when learning to shoot a basket, hit a ball, or return a tennis serve you are not aware of all the subtle manipulations and adjustments you make, in fact an awareness of what you are doing often leads you to "choke" and miss the ball or basket.

    Solution learning often is a conscious effort as when trying to solve a word puzzle we may consciously search for solutions. However experiments have been conducted wherein girls were complimented every time they wore red. In a short amount of time the number of girls wearing red increased dramatically. The girls were unconsciously learning that wearing the color red was a solution to the problem of gaining compliments.

    Consciousness is not necessary for thinking.
    Karl Marbe in 1901 conducted experiments in which subjects were asked to pick up small weights in each hand and to place the lighter of the weights in front of them. Although the subjects could report about their conscious feel of the weights, the texture, color, and so on, none could point to a consciousness process of judgement as to which weighted more.

    Consciousness is not needed for reasoning.
    In certain instances conclusions or insights are brought to our conscious attention with no reasoning having taken place. Einstein is reported to have said that many of his ideas came on him so suddenly that he had to be very careful when shaving with his straight razor so as to not cut himself when he was surprised. Gaus reported the solution to a new theorem came on him like a strike of lightening and Poincare reported that the realization that Fausian functions were identical non Euclidean geometry arrived as he stepped on an omnibus with no former thoughts having paved the way at all.

    Consciousness has no set location.
    In our culture we place consciousness in our heads, however, Aristotle placed consciousness just above the heart, believing the brain was only a cooling organ. Many people have reported consciousness taking place outside of the body such as in near death or drug related experiences.


    And that's enough for now.​
     
  15. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    Getting back to Mary. Experiments have been conducted wherein cats have been raised from birth in a room with only horizontal stripes, or vertical, I don't remember.

    Upon reaching adulthood the cats were found to have no recognition of vertical lines, for them vertical lines did not exist.

    I assume this would be the case with Mary. The recognition of color would not occur to her.
     
  16. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Spoken like a true reductionist. Mary is a color scientist and is capable of "seeing" red, but lives in a world of black and white Yes situation is absurd, but that's the case with analogies and metaphors (e.g., the Bible). To add to the absurdity, let's suppose she also has a Ph.D. in human reproductive physiology, a virgin, and deaf. She leaves her shelter and enters the world of color, music and sex. What are her experiences? Would she find that anything much is added to her understanding by it? Those paintings by Botticelli, Rembrandt and Picasso resemble the black and whites she's been studying in her lab: same shapes, same frequencies, somewhat different, so what? Did they have the same emotional impact for her in the lab that they have now? Did she come more alive to the real world and the geniuses that created these works, or are they just irrelvant to the underlying realities of shapes, paint on canvas? She hears Bach and Mozart for the first time. Just notes? And she has her first sexual encounter. Pretty much the same as I expected from those physiology books? This seems to be Dennett's mindset. Unless he's a highly functioning zombie, he's obviously experienced the kind of consciousness that includes qualia. And yet he thinks its irrelevant to our understanding of consciousness, which he studies in much the same way as Mary studied art, music and sex. Worse than Mary, he maintains that's the only valid way to study it. In other words, he makes what Chalmers calls the "hard problem" of consciousness easy by eliminating qualia and producing a 500 page book entitled Consciousness Explained.

    Taken on its face, this seems curious to say the least. To understand it, I think we need to take a look at the ideological overlay that "consciousness" has taken on over the centuries. First, there is the metaphysical overlay from associations with Soul Hindus and people influenced by Hinduism think that consciousness is all there is, and that when we realize this, we'' know we're all part of the One. I debated a guy on these forums who was arguing that physical reality doesn't exist. I told him he could test his theory by jumping off the top of a tall building. That was cruel, and I've felt guilty about it. He hasn't been on this site since, and I hope he didn't follow my advice! Then there are the Christians and Muslims who think are inhabited temporarily by a kind of Casper the Friendly Ghost who is the real "us" and will take his flight when our body dies. And finally the followers of Descartes who inflicted on us Mind-Body Dualism. This led to a strong reaction in modern philosophy, including such thinkers as Gilbert Ryle who challenged the "Ghost in the Machine" . Ryle was Dennett's teacher and mentor. I think that's why Dennet can ignore the reality of his own experience and exclude it from his studies of consciousness.

    You mention that "this is an interaction of light hitting her retina being translated by her visual cortex, so where does the non-physical interaction come into play?" That's exactly the issue, and the honest answer is we don't know. Pinker thinks we my never know, because it's simply beyond our human capabilities. I like to think he's wrong, because that would be boring, and the phenomenon is so fascinating. I, for one, think there is a non-physical interface. Qualia themselves seem to be non-physical, but there seems to be a large range of interface between the physical (matter) and the non-physical (energy). One can even be converted to the other, and we know that electrical activity goes on in our material brains. At present, we don't know how, if at all, this applies to qualia, but there are models of consciousness that have given it a try. The best one I know of is David Searle in The Mystery of Consciousness, acknowledging the reality or qualia as the essence of consciousness but advocating “biological naturalism”, in which consciousness entirely the result of neurobiological processes.
     
  17. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    EEEK! I don't know about those definitions of consciousness, some of those which you are suggesting consciousness is not seem inextricably linked to consciousness, perhaps one of the aspects why the topic is so elusive.

    For instance in regards to quaila and reactivity, what would it mean to experience a beautiful piece of music yet not be reactive to it?
     
  18. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    Are these emotional impacts somehow residing outside of her physical experience though?

    I mean I can sit here and think about a 1, 4, 5 chord progression of 12 bar blues and write it down in what key I want to be in and approximate the sound in my head. If when I go to play the composition on the guitar and have the direct experience of it, I'm obviously going to have a different experience compared to what my mind and paper envisioned prior but is there any aspect of non-physicality involved in this?

    Clearly we are introducing new types of cerebral processing going from thinking about and writing the piece of music to playing it, such as having my hands strum the guitar and fret the correct notes, as well as picking up the sound that is coming out of the amplifier. So I don't think that I could say in this instance for certain some non-physical component has magically appeared from these 2 different experiences of writing the composition to performing it, they both rely on fairly different components of the mental/physical realm, even if they are set out to be directed towards the same experience.
     
  19. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    I'd say probably not. We know that lots of interactions go on between the physical realm, (aka matter) and the non-physical realm (aka, energy), which we know are even interchangeable. Important examples are found in the brain, where electrical currents seem to be generated by physical material. One of the most intriguing efforts to integrate qualia with neurobiolgy is Professor John Searle of UCLA who proposes in The Mystery of Consciousness “biological naturalism”, in which qualia exist as the essence of consciousness but are caused by lower level neurobiological processes. Unfortunately, he's only a philosopher, so it will take the scientists to confirm this. This would require them to take qualia seriously enough not to dismiss it at the gate.
     
  20. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    But some of us recognize it, so it would be presumptuous for her to deny its existence or to claim it isn't important.
     

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