Is Consciousness Solely a Product of the Brain?

[pftest]

Whether or not we can call it as humans, there is a threshold of complexity AND the action of those complex ingredients that forms the line between living and inert, never mind conscious. A simple way to look at this would be that unlike your pile of sand, you can pick out neurons from a brain one by one, and whether you like it or not, it will cease to be a brain. When exactly you reduce it to the point of being dead or inert is something you'll discover, but it doesn't depend on how we view it, or define it.

The only types of thresholds you will find are those where process undergoes a 'dramatic' increase. For example, a single drop of water might cause a filled bucket to tip over. It may seem dramatic, but its still just water in motion, just like the single drop that caused it.

There isn't really a boundary between life and inanimate matter either, its just that when we compare an organism with a rock, we place them on opposite extremes of the spectrum and label them as such. But a spectrum it is, just like with the pile of sand. "Pileness" isn't a physical property that pops into existence at some point, its just label we attach to some configuration of physical ingredients. Labelling things is very useful socially (to communicate), but it isn't an indicator of the emergence of new physical properties. If it were, then a rock would get all kinds of new properties when a japanese person observes it.

This is why many people say that life is just chemistry, that it doesn't contain any extra properties, while others say that the whole universe is alive. In the OP paper Strawson also mentions that life is reducible.

You can't look at a rock and call it stupid, because stupidity is a function of non-inert, thinking matter. A rock isn't even a definition that means much... a rock of what exactly?... granite? Sandstone? Cocaine?! In the same way, I'm not touching "conscious", because we only have ourselves at the "top" example, and can only compare ourselves to other animals, fungi, rocks... etc.

You can get a rock we call a planet, which is incredibly complex and dynamic, but it's still not thinking; two neurons do more thinking than Jupiter ever will. There is plenty of physical "noise" in a rock, but no signal, and I'd say it's the capacity to produce signals that is the big difference, the yardstick we can use.

A signal is only a signal when it means something to an observer. Someone might flash a light at you with certain intervals and you may receive a message this way, but otherwise it is just a bunch of photons. Talking about rocks and signals, have a look at this article:

Take that rock over there. It doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything, at least to our gross perception. But at the microlevel it consists of an unimaginable number of atoms connected by springy chemical bonds, all jiggling around at a rate that even our fastest supercomputer might envy. And they are not jiggling at random. The rock’s innards “see” the entire universe by means of the gravitational and electromagnetic signals it is continuously receiving. Such a system can be viewed as an all-purpose information processor, one whose inner dynamics mirror any sequence of mental states that our brains might run through. And where there is information, says panpsychism, there is consciousness. In David Chalmers’s slogan, “Experience is information from the inside; physics is information from the outside.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/m...r=rssuserland&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

 

[nismaratwork]

Panpsychic Solipsism? Ow, my head.

Again, who is saying that the universe is alive? If you want the boundary that straddles what is living and what is inert, see Virus. In my view, you're overcomplicating this for the sake of your pre-existing beliefs. Then again, maybe I'm just tired of the pure philosophy interpretations of QM Interpretations... to say that much is lost in the translation is a grotesque understatement.

 

[pftest]

Panpsychic Solipsism? Ow, my head.

Again, who is saying that the universe is alive? If you want the boundary that straddles what is living and what is inert, see Virus. In my view, you're overcomplicating this for the sake of your pre-existing beliefs. Then again, maybe I'm just tired of the pure philosophy interpretations of QM Interpretations... to say that much is lost in the translation is a grotesque understatement.

I don't see any counterarguments in your post, so i think my point has been made.

 

[nismaratwork]

I don't see any counterarguments in your post, so i think my point has been made.

You didn't observe it so it doesn't exist?


There is this as well... https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3206751&postcount=32

Not that it really needs to be repeated.

I will ask again, who is saying that the universe is alive?

 

[apeiron]

And where there is information, says panpsychism, there is consciousness. In David Chalmers’s slogan, “Experience is information from the inside; physics is information from the outside.

But this can't be the case if information has been defined in a way that removes all internal structure and leaves only an externalist perspective. There is no room inside a physicalist definition of information for meaning, and hence any kind of experience.

Hence a natty slogan, but also a vacuous statement.

Information theory was all about removing particular observers so as to be able describe signals in a general way. It was in fact about making a sharp distinction between meaning and marks, symbols and the ideas they might refer to.

So the "objective view" became the generalised idea that any mark could potentially be meaningful (to someone or something). But a mark needs to be made on a surface to be actually distinctive. A bit must have a context.

So this now also gives us a new objective definition of meaningfulness as the amount of information discarded or actively suppressed. It is the work done to make that flat surface which can be marked, that global context in which a distinctive event can be detected. Noise is not noise but actually a measure of the entropy dissipated in order to manufacture a bit of information.

You can see this pretty easily with consciousness. A meaningful state of awareness is about all the potential experience that has been actively suppressed. If you are thinking of a rabbit, it is a distinctive mental state because of all the other things you know and could have been thinking about, but aren't. The more constrained your mental state - now think about a pet rabbit you had as a kid - the more alternative experiences you have discarded and so the more intensely-felt is your current state of consciousness.

So information has no inside. It is atomistic. It is a limit, a boundary state. It is the smallest detectable mark - which in turn requires that there be the globally flattest surface possible. A mark can only exist to the extent that there is a global state that is removing, discarding, all other potential marks surrounding it.

The slogan should thus be that physics (ie: information theory) is imagining a world of marks without contexts, while experience involves the manufacturing of meaningfully marked states of organisation.

Or more succinctly, physics is information without context, experience is information with context.

So panpsychism fails as experience demands rich contexts and active entropification.

A rock has few internal degrees of freedom and is a poor entropifier. It can absorb radiation at a high wavelength and re-radiate it at a lower one. So it does some dissipation. But very limited.

Something living however is continually manufacturing meaning by disposing of negentropy. The throughput is high. And the internal states (of the system) are accordingly rich. There is a high degree of informational order because of the large amount of waste heat, or disordering, being exported.

This dissipative organisation in fact gives a subjective POV. A rock re-radiating sunlight creates only a shallow entropy gradient. But it does still have a distinctive orientation to the world. There is information in the fact it exists at that location and is dissipating the sun's photons. So stretching definitions, the rock is conscious or experiencing in this sense - it has a POV.

But the rock is a holonomic device. Its global organisation is fixed - the electrostatic bonds that holds in atoms in a crystaline lattice were long locked into place by the cooling of magma. So the dissipation achieved by a heated jiggling of the atoms is not a complex story. There is no internal organisation that is thinking rabbits instead of cats, dogs and geese. Or even its hot, time to get into the shade before I crack.

But living things have non-holonomic constraints. They can organise their internal states to have internal meaning. There are alternative paths that can be taken. A lizard can choose to go sit in the sun to warm up, then retreat to the shade to cool down.

The POV is clearly far more meaningful - there is now "something that it is like to be" a hot lizard, because there is also something it is like to be as a cold lizard. Whereas a rock just be whatever it is with no choice. It's dissipative actions are entirely outside itself - a matter of whether the sun shines - and not something that it can meaningfully regulate by changing its relationship with the world.

So the sun's heat means something to a lizard, it means nothing to a rock. Physics can say the hot photons are just information. Their entropification is just rearranged information. And the dissipation - the shift from ordered to disordered states - is meaningful only in the god's eye view enjoyed by the second law. It sees what's going on. Indeed what must happen as a global constraint on reality.

But a systems view, one that can account for non-holonomic constraints and complexity in general, can distinguish meaning from information. The systems view also counts the information discarded, not just the information present. It sees the whole, rather than the parts, the creation of the surface as well as the making of the marks.

 

[nismaratwork]

A natty slogan, possibly why it's in the Times and not in a peer reviewed journal where laughter would resound.

 

[ConradDJ]

I see it differently because generalisation should produce two things - two halves of a dichotomy, two poles of a spectrum, two levels of a hierarchy. And so we can remain "within" what we produce. If we only imagine monistic options, then we are putting ourselves "outside" looking on.

I'm sorry, it's the end of my workday and I'm too worn down to respond intelligently to your post -- I'll try in the morning. But I just want to say, this is a very cool idea. For a moment, I felt like I could see your metaphysics from inside, and the dualities became palpable... "being here" as being pulled in opposite directions. Except that the "pull" in each direction is quite different, not at all symmetrical...

Really, whatever this existence-environment is that we're each seeing from inside, from our own viewpoints, I think that it's made of more different kinds of structure than these dualities. But I love the image of "producing a dichotomy that we remain inside..."

Conrad

 

[nismaratwork]

I'm sorry, it's the end of my workday and I'm too worn down to respond intelligently to your post -- I'll try in the morning. But I just want to say, this is a very cool idea. For a moment, I felt like I could see your metaphysics from inside, and the dualities became palpable... "being here" as being pulled in opposite directions. Except that the "pull" in each direction is quite different, not at all symmetrical...

Really, whatever this existence-environment is that we're each seeing from inside, from our own viewpoints, I think that it's made of more different kinds of structure than these dualities. But I love the image of "producing a dichotomy that we remain inside..."

Conrad

Apeiron: he's not a little eloquent.

 

[apeiron]

For a moment, I felt like I could see your metaphysics from inside, and the dualities became palpable... "being here" as being pulled in opposite directions. Except that the "pull" in each direction is quite different, not at all symmetrical...

Ahh, the next key idea now is equilibrium. You are being pulled from two directions (or pushed and prodded). But a system is developed when these contrasting forces or causalities are in balance over all scales (so isotopic and homogeneous for all possible scales of observation by observers within the system).

So the dualities are asymmetric (pulling from opposite ends of scale), but then locally symmetric because they are in a constant dynamic balance.

It is the old edge of chaos story. The criticality story. A fractal situation. If reality is being pulled on by two limits like the discrete and the continuous, then at any scale of observation, there is a fruitful mix of both things going on.

Thus you get classical mechanics arising as the balance between QM and GR. From inside the system, you cannot see that spacetime is locally grainy, or that it is globally curved. Everything within a decohered inertial frame looks differentiable and flat. There is no sense of being pulled in a direction if the "forces" acting on you are balanced.

[Edit]: Note a concrete example of how this works in the very maths of fractals.

The fractal dimension of a Koch curve (the equilibrium balance of the interative symmetry breaking) is log4/log3, or 1.26...

So you have a basic ratio of a line 3 units long becoming broken out into a curve 4 units long. Then taking the log breaks the symmetry over all possible scales.

The "local" here is the 1D line as an element. The "global" is the 2D plane that is an extra dimension where the symmetry can break towards. And the "pull" of both limits is then seen over all physical scale.

 

[Pythagorean]

So I'm sitting here thinking about something and trying to make a decision. A cosmic particle flies in from a distant star and gets absorbed by a neuron in my brain, causing it to fire... and this results in my deciding a certain way. That’s the objective viewpoint. My subjective experience is that I made the decision. I don’t understand why these two descriptions of the situation are in any way contradictory.

They're not contradictory at all! That's my point. Not that you can't do what you want, but that what you want is already determined by your genetic and sitmuli history. The act of you "subjectively" making a decision is the deterministic process playing itself out.

The alternative, that things are non-deterministic (random) wouldn't look very good for free will. either. There's really no room for free will anywhere without inventing something new! But there's room for willpower of course, as you said. We still subjectively feel the decision-making process as an integral part of our lives (whether it's inhibiting our own behavior or fighting the odds of our environment).

 

[ConradDJ]

They're not contradictory at all! That's my point. Not that you can't do what you want, but that what you want is already determined by your genetic and sitmuli history. The act of you "subjectively" making a decision is the deterministic process playing itself out.

The alternative, that things are non-deterministic (random) wouldn't look very good for free will. either. There's really no room for free will anywhere without inventing something new!

I'm just not grasping what you mean by "free will", I guess. What exactly is it that "there's no room for", whether the universe is deterministic or not?

The evidence strongly suggests that at the quantum level, when systems interact, new information gets created. Decisions get made that are dependent on a context of prior conditions, but not uniquely "determined" by them.

That pretty much corresponds to my experience of the world, too. What I do and what happens around me is not random, and not independent of past history. If complex past situations didn't carry over into the present, if physical interaction weren't very precisely reliable, lawful, predictable, there would only be chaos here -- no atoms, no molecules, no chemistry, no life, and certainly no sort of "free will" worth talking about.

It seems to me that in order for there to be anything at all resembling "free will", we need a world that's both very highly "deterministic" and also open to new possibilities. And that seems to be exactly the sort of world we live in. The evidence is that chance rather than lawfulness is at the bottom of things. But there are so many levels of structure in the world, each characterized by a different way of combining randomness with order. So I'm wondering... what kind of world could better provide for something like "free will"?

 

[Pythagorean]

I'm just not grasping what you mean by "free will", I guess. What exactly is it that "there's no room for", whether the universe is deterministic or not?

The evidence strongly suggests that at the quantum level, when systems interact, new information gets created. Decisions get made that are dependent on a context of prior conditions, but not uniquely "determined" by them.

That pretty much corresponds to my experience of the world, too. What I do and what happens around me is not random, and not independent of past history. If complex past situations didn't carry over into the present, if physical interaction weren't very precisely reliable, lawful, predictable, there would only be chaos here -- no atoms, no molecules, no chemistry, no life, and certainly no sort of "free will" worth talking about.

It seems to me that in order for there to be anything at all resembling "free will", we need a world that's both very highly "deterministic" and also open to new possibilities. And that seems to be exactly the sort of world we live in. The evidence is that chance rather than lawfulness is at the bottom of things. But there are so many levels of structure in the world, each characterized by a different way of combining randomness with order. So I'm wondering... what kind of world could better provide for something like "free will"?

Ok, let's start this way. Define what you mean by free will.

 

[ConradDJ]

Ok, let's start this way. Define what you mean by free will.

Now here's a real problem... can we usefully define something that neither you nor I seem to care about?

I have the impression, from discussions in this forum, that some people strongly feel that they have the power to make decisions, but they also believe that this is somehow in contradiction to what physics tells us about the world. I think we've agreed there is no such contradiction?

Because when I say "I" decide something, I'm not pretending to be independent of any prior history or conditions, whether inside my brain or out there in the world. "I" means, whatever decides what I'm deciding right now. If you want to claim that it's a "causal chain of determinism" that's bringing about the decision, I think you're exaggerating... though not entirely wrong. But I don't see why it makes any difference in this context.

 

[Ken G]

They're not contradictory at all! That's my point. Not that you can't do what you want, but that what you want is already determined by your genetic and sitmuli history. The act of you "subjectively" making a decision is the deterministic process playing itself out.

It almost sounds like you still believe that determinism is a self-consistent ontology for the process of perception and reason. Are you aware that it is not consistent with physics? Determinism in physics is not an ontology, it is a tool, like a hammer. Nothing more, that is quite demonstrably true about physics. Those who elevate determinism to an ontology are choosing a belief system, which is their prerogative, but it ain't physics.

The alternative, that things are non-deterministic (random) wouldn't look very good for free will. either.

That is hardly the alternative! That false dichotomy exposes the fundamentally incorrect assumptions that lie at the very foundation of your argument.

 

[nismaratwork]

It almost sounds like you still believe that determinism is a self-consistent ontology for the process of perception and reason. Are you aware that it is not consistent with physics? Determinism in physics is not an ontology, it is a tool, like a hammer. Nothing more, that is quite demonstrably true about physics. Those who elevate determinism to an ontology are choosing a belief system, which is their prerogative, but it ain't physics.
That is hardly the alternative! That false dichotomy exposes the fundamentally incorrect assumptions that lie at the very foundation of your argument.

Well said, and I'd add... preference has little to do with forming reality... unless solipsists are correct and then it's all a moot point anyway.

 

[Ken G]

Because when I say "I" decide something, I'm not pretending to be independent of any prior history or conditions, whether inside my brain or out there in the world. "I" means, whatever decides what I'm deciding right now. If you want to claim that it's a "causal chain of determinism" that's bringing about the decision, I think you're exaggerating... though not entirely wrong. But I don't see why it makes any difference in this context.

I think another way to express this key issue is the question of whether we should subordinate the "self" to the "environment" (or the mental to the physical is another way to slice it), or subordinate the environment to the self, or simply say that both the concept of self and the concept of the environment stem from the interaction between the two. To me, the first choice is clearly wrong and the second choice is better but has problems (largely that the self appears to be made of the same basic "stuff" as the environment, there's no clear delimiter), but the third makes a lot of sense.

 

[nismaratwork]

I think another way to express this key issue is the question of whether we should subordinate the "self" to the "environment" (or the mental to the physical is another way to slice it), or subordinate the environment to the self, or simply say that both the concept of self and the concept of the environment stem from the interaction between the two. To me, the first choice is clearly wrong and the second choice is better but has problems (largely that the self appears to be made of the same basic "stuff" as the environment, there's no clear delimiter), but the third makes a lot of sense.

The third also has real-world examples to support your view, such as genetics being more than 1, or 2, but rather the complex interaction of both, without which 1 and 2 would be BLaaaaah.

 

[pftest]

You didn't observe it so it doesn't exist? There is this as well... https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3206751&postcount=32

Not that it really needs to be repeated.

See https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3207578&postcount=36

I will ask again, who is saying that the universe is alive?

Just google "universe alive". It doesn't really matter if one believes that life is just chemistry or that the universe is alive, it implies the same thing: there is no physical boundary between life and non-life. There is only an imaginary boundary. So the "life" example, like the other examples you mentioned, conflicts with the idea that C emerged in brains. In fact, the idea that C emerged in brains conflicts with all we know about nature. Strawson calls it magic for a good reason.

 

[nismaratwork]

See https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3207578&postcount=36

Just google "universe alive". It doesn't really matter if one believes that life is just chemistry or that the universe is alive, it implies the same thing: there is no physical boundary between life and non-life. There is only an imaginary boundary. So the "life" example, like the other examples you mentioned, conflicts with the idea that C emerged in brains. In fact, the idea that C emerged in brains conflicts with all we know about nature. Strawson calls it magic for a good reason.

Um... no, how about you provide the evidence asked for, as per guidelines.

 

[apeiron]

I'm just not grasping what you mean by "free will", I guess. What exactly is it that "there's no room for", whether the universe is deterministic or not?

The evidence strongly suggests that at the quantum level, when systems interact, new information gets created. Decisions get made that are dependent on a context of prior conditions, but not uniquely "determined" by them.

One point still missing in these discussions is Pattee's epistemic cut which distinguishes between rate dependent dynamics (all the deterministic/probablistic action down at the physical level) and rate independent information (a "something else", that is not physically determined, and whose actual status is a little hard to speak about).

Now physical determinism claims that the world is composed of atomistic events following fixed rules (holonomic boundary conditions). At the Newtonian level, there is no choice. Mass and energy fix the course of every particle in block universe style.

So this is why we get so many arguing that even brains are deterministic devices. It is physics all the way up with no room for anything different than rate dependent dynamics.

But Pattee's point is about computational devices. About symbolic processing.

Something changes when you have a set of switches that can change state "at no cost". Or rather, all at exactly the same cost. Suddenly mass and energy and even spacetime drop out of the picture as physically, the cost of coding any bit of information becomes the same. So the only causes determining the action become symbolic one, computational ones.

We are completely out of the Newtonian paradigm where you can look at the physics and say this caused that to happen. If every event is zeroed to have the same energetic cost, then there are no Newtonian causes visible to explain what is happening.

This is what we have with a computer, a Turing machine. There is a complete divorce of hardware and software. The hardware don't know what the software is doing. The state of the machine may change, but this is not determined by the physics of the machine, purely by the patterns conjured up by the software. The symbols and their rules are determining the action. The physical machine becomes so irrelevant that a Turing machine can be implemented on any suitable "tape and gate" handling structure.

Now life and mind use this "computational" trick in a variety of grades to create the complexity that gives them autonomy, choice, memory, identity, a "subjective POV". They do literally remove a part of themselves from the brute deterministic flow of Newtonian physics by creating this computational back-story - a private realm of memory and habits and intentions. The non-holonomic constraints that Pattee talks about.

And obvious rate independent device is DNA. Energetically, it cost the same to code for any combination of codons, and hence for DNA to represent any kind of protein. Remembering a protein becomes a free choice for the genes. They can chose this one, or that one, and it is all the same in the end so far as Newtonian mechanics goes. The choice becomes purely a private or subjective one. If it suits the organism, it will remember that protein instead of the millions of alternative choices it could have made with equal ease.

Of course, having made a choice, that does have deterministic consequences of a kind. The genes are pretty computational and will manufacture that protein under the right combination of external circumstances. So when the Newtonian world of rate dependent dynamics is sensed to have reached some critical point, the genes will pump out some enzyme to control that reaction, shut it down, speed it up. Change the boundary conditions that prevail so that the metabolic activity self-organises into a new state.

Yet the genes can make new choices. There is also a further informational machinery to evolve their state. Sexual reproduction makes use of randomness - gaussian or constrained to a single scale randomness, so still quite constrained - to mix the protein recipes about. A computational shuffling of the deck that is cost-free in terms of energetics (and so why it can be properly "random"). Then the shuffled deck is thrown back into the Newtonian fray - the organism goes through life and there is differential breeding success that updates the information represented by the gene pool.

So with genes, and sex, we can see the dance between the two realms - the Newtonian fray which is "completely determined" according to Kim, Q Goest, and others, a closed causal tale, and then the private realm of symbols and rules that is, in principle, absolutely free to play its own games.

The same with words. It costs us as much to say peanut as universe. Each is just a puff of air, a quick effort by our throat muscles. The symbolic weight of the words may be hugely different, but there are no Newtonian constraints acting on the words we chose to utter. The ideas they represent can be as small or large, general or particular, vague or crisp, as we like.

As a Vygotskean aside, it should thus be obvious why the human invention of speech created a rapid mental revolution. The thinking of animals is still energetically constrained. They can easily think about whatever is present (the way their brains are organised, they have no choice), but they have no free machinery for thinking about things that are not present. Without symbols to shuffle ideas about "at no cost", the thoughts of animals are reality-constrained. Every idea is having to pay for itself in terms of how it is serving the immediate demands of the moment - brains existing to balance energy needs against energy opportunities in terms of current behaviours.

So when it comes to talking about Newtonian determinism, the whole point about life is that it arose by finding a way to beat the game. It discovered computational mechanism - a symbolic determinism that could stand apart from the physical determinism. That is a new level that was itself undetermined, but could invent/evolve its own world of rule-based action.

So forget QM or even non-linear dynamics. Newtonian determinism just cannot touch a computational realm of action. Once the Newtonian cost of representing symbols and executing rules has been zeroed, then Newtonian determinism can no longer choose between states of representation. That choice becomes a purely internal one.

Of course in practice, the two levels of action are in interaction. There is no point having a symbolic capacity except to serve the purpose of controlling the Newtonian fray. Well, that is how it works for life and mind. Actual computers could not care because there really is no interaction between their software realm and their hardware realm. But for life and mind - complex adaptive systems - there is an active interaction that makes all the activity meaningful. The system has a memory, a history, goals, intentions, plans.

This does not tell you what freewill is (freewill is a human social construct, wrapped around a brain's ability to make intelligent choices based on general goals) but it should convince that Newtonian determinism cannot determine the patterns playing out at the level of software. The symbols and their rules are literally out of sight so far as that level of physical description goes.

 

[pftest]

Um... no, how about you provide the evidence asked for, as per guidelines.

Evidence for what? The emergence of consciousness in brains? You are the one claiming it happens, and I am the one saying it is not a rational position to hold.

 

[JDStupi]

Just as a comment, I don't think that nismar is claiming that there is some discrete jump from no-consciousness to consciousness at the human level. You may say that it is irrelevant at which scale the jump occurs. I don't know that we are ready to say that, looking at things apeiron says it would suggest a much more gradual process of "emerging" consciousness. One that would gradually gain in complexity.

Yes, you are right that as we take one grain of sand away at a time from a "pile" there is no defining line that says "300=pile, 299=conglomeration" or what have you. However, there does come a time when the word "pile" ceases to hold meaning. The only thing that, in my opinion, has been shown is that "consciousness" is a word much like "pile" that is lacking in precise defintion, a qualitative concept. But we shouldn't make ontological conclusions from a demonstration of the limitations of our language.

 

[nismaratwork]

Evidence for what? The emergence of consciousness in brains? You are the one claiming it happens, and I am the one saying it is not a rational position to hold.

Evidence that "people believe the universe is alive" in accordance with PF standards for the statement you've made; "just google it" isn't in it, and you know better. The last time you took this kind of position, remember how well that ended? Let's please avoid that, and just follow the guidelines which exist for a reason.

I can't just say, "Snails love garlic butter and cook themselves, I hear people say." Then tell you to google it...

...and if you mean that some people believe ANYTHING, what was "some believe the universe is alive" doing in your posts here? You know I don't play these games.

 

[nismaratwork]

Just as a comment, I don't think that nismar is claiming that there is some discrete jump from no-consciousness to consciousness at the human level. You may say that it is irrelevant at which scale the jump occurs. I don't know that we are ready to say that, looking at things apeiron says it would suggest a much more gradual process of "emerging" consciousness. One that would gradually gain in complexity.

Bingo, in fact, I think what we see as conciousness would be put in its place if something more complex, alive, an sentient came along. We're limited by being the best we can find, and then concluding that we're special; even if we're unique, that may not argue for us being terribly special. That special status gets narrower the more we learn about life in general...

Yes, you are right that as we take one grain of sand away at a time from a "pile" there is no defining line that says "300=pile, 299=conglomeration" or what have you. However, there does come a time when the word "pile" ceases to hold meaning. The only thing that, in my opinion, has been shown is that "consciousness" is a word much like "pile" that is lacking in precise defintion, a qualitative concept. But we shouldn't make ontological conclusions from a demonstration of the limitations of our language.

Yep... semantics and word-games are just a pleasant (or not) diversion here, and really are the refuge of a failed position.

 

[Pythagorean]

It almost sounds like you still believe that determinism is a self-consistent ontology for the process of perception and reason. Are you aware that it is not consistent with physics? Determinism in physics is not an ontology, it is a tool, like a hammer. Nothing more, that is quite demonstrably true about physics. Those who elevate determinism to an ontology are choosing a belief system, which is their prerogative, but it ain't physics.
That is hardly the alternative! That false dichotomy exposes the fundamentally incorrect assumptions that lie at the very foundation of your argument.

I don't believe in any ontology. You and I both were the ones telling Q_Goest not to confuse the model with the reality in a previous thread. We should be past philosophy 100 concepts here and discuss things from the operational assumption point-of-view. The point is, that humans are more predictable with these tools than you seem to be giving credit for (and with repeated precision). To the point where when people have thought they've decided on something, their decision was already set in motion by unconscious events (from the internal molecular systems to the external stimuli system). To the point where... well, can you find a human behavior that can't be described and predicted mechanistically?

Biological systems are, after all, classical systems. And classical systems are deterministic (we predict a big bang because our universe is expanding, so it must have been confined to a point in the past). To me, it sounds like you want to argue that one day, we may drop the ball in a gravitational field and it won't go down. Again, 100% true, 100% useless. This is the nature of deterministic systems: we assume that yes, the ball will fall in the gravitational field under Newtonian laws of physics. We move forward from our assumptions until we find a conflict. Living organisms are such a classical system that we have found no conflicts with. We just keep finding more and more functional mechanisms for behavior as time progresses.

The one known exception, a plant, uses quantum superposition. But again, in a deterministic way: it uses quantum superposition to ensure that it makes the most efficient use of the sun's energy.

You saw the video I posted, which is fun and neat and thought-provoking, but to really get into the core of it, you have to see all the evidence that shows how well humans can be modeled as deterministic systems. To really gain the appreciation of it, you have to have the knowledge of how humans work from the objective "molecular machinery" point of view. We don't have to deny the existence of the subjective experience, but the experiments demonstrate that the behavior of organisms can be determined by their internal and external physical states without considering their subjective state.

Here's an excellent lecture on ethology that will demonstrate a small portion of deterministic human behavior:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISVaoLlW104&p=848F2368C90DDC3D

Though I think if you really want to have an honest discussion about the science of behavior, you'd have to watch them all.

 

[Pythagorean]

Now here's a real problem... can we usefully define something that neither you nor I seem to care about?

I have the impression, from discussions in this forum, that some people strongly feel that they have the power to make decisions, but they also believe that this is somehow in contradiction to what physics tells us about the world. I think we've agreed there is no such contradiction?

yes, we have. When our prefrontal cortex is able to inhibit primitive behavior, based on social conditioning, we might say we have demonstrated willpower, which I don't argue against. Or when an organism is able to persists through threatening environmental odds, it may refer to it's will. I don't argue against this either (though we know this kind of will is limited, we can't defy the break the laws of physics no matter how bad we may want).

Rather, what is inconsistent with determinism (i.e. incombatibilism) is the notion of "free will". That some kind of soul makes a decision independent of the physical mechanisms of the brain.

 

[pftest]

Just as a comment, I don't think that nismar is claiming that there is some discrete jump from no-consciousness to consciousness at the human level. You may say that it is irrelevant at which scale the jump occurs. I don't know that we are ready to say that, looking at things apeiron says it would suggest a much more gradual process of "emerging" consciousness. One that would gradually gain in complexity.

Yes it is irrelevant at which scale the jump occurs. If something is non-existent, then it can't get gradually more complex either. So instead of the emergence of consciousness in brains (which implies that consciousness suddenly "flipped on" at some point, no matter how small the scale), it makes more sense that we have a very complex form of consciousness in brains, but that as we go back on the evolutionary timeline (and before), consciousness becomes gradually less complex. Most of us accept this is true when we go back to our apelike-ancestors, and that many other simpler organisms are conscious (cats, snakes, perhaps even insects). But as the organisms get really simple (or when we reach inanimate matter), many will think consciousness is no longer present. I understand the intuition behind this but it conflicts with the idea of a gradual increase in complexity.

Yes, you are right that as we take one grain of sand away at a time from a "pile" there is no defining line that says "300=pile, 299=conglomeration" or what have you. However, there does come a time when the word "pile" ceases to hold meaning. The only thing that, in my opinion, has been shown is that "consciousness" is a word much like "pile" that is lacking in precise defintion, a qualitative concept. But we shouldn't make ontological conclusions from a demonstration of the limitations of our language.

Now you are getting to the important point: language itself and the act of labelling things. Physically, the pile is just a collection of basic physical ingredients (elementary particles, etc.). But our senses think it is an entirely new/different phenomenon so we give it a new label (this is useful to communicate with other people). However, the pile is reducible, meaning that it can in principle be described fully in terms of basic physical ingredients. So the new label "pile" is actually redundant. "pileness" is not a physical property, it is merely a higher level description. The important part here is that labeling things and mistaking them to be new phenomena is a conscious activity. Consciousness is required to do it in the first place. That is why one says that consciousness is like "pileness", one in fact says that consciousness is a higher level description, and higher level descriptions require consciousness in the first place.

 

[pftest]

Evidence that "people believe the universe is alive" in accordance with PF standards for the statement you've made; "just google it" isn't in it, and you know better. The last time you took this kind of position, remember how well that ended? Let's please avoid that, and just follow the guidelines which exist for a reason.

I can't just say, "Snails love garlic butter and cook themselves, I hear people say." Then tell you to google it...

...and if you mean that some people believe ANYTHING, what was "some believe the universe is alive" doing in your posts here? You know I don't play these games.

The last few times i posted a handful of peer reviewed papers that supported my points (of course, they supported my points precisely because i often get my points from science). You didnt, and so it was pointed out to you by a mentor that the forum isn't an opinions column. Enough said.

Now I am afraid I am going to be a bit more brief with you because i see this isn't fruitful for discussions on PF. If you provide counterarguments then i will happily respond to them. Otherwise no.

 

[Pythagorean]

Evidence that "people believe the universe is alive"...

At what point does a bunch of little organisms become one organism? Where's the line between the consciousness of individuals and the collective conscious of a subculture (such as physicsforums)?

Where's the boundary between living things and the universe?

How do you bake a pie from scratch?

 

[JDStupi]

Now you are getting to the important point: language itself and the act of labelling things. Physically, the pile is just a collection of basic physical ingredients (elementary particles, etc.). But our senses think it is an entirely new/different phenomenon so we give it a new label (this is useful to communicate with other people). However, the pile is reducible, meaning that it can in principle be described fully in terms of basic physical ingredients. So the new label "pile" is actually redundant. "pileness" is not a physical property, it is merely a higher level description. The important part here is that labeling things and mistaking them to be new phenomena is a conscious activity. Consciousness is required to do it in the first place. That is why one says that consciousness is like "pileness", one in fact says that consciousness is a higher level description, and higher level descriptions require consciousness in the first place

While it is true that we can label things (and be mistaken) only if we are conscious, I still stick to my previous statement. "Consciousness" is not a term quite so easily given a definition. While the Being of consciousness (if you will allow me to speak in such vague terms) is given in experience, the concepts we form of consciousness are not. Exactly how we define consciousness is of the nature of a hypothesis. So, for all factual things that we label, we can be mistaken about the nature of the description applied. "Consciousness" is a concept we have labelled within experience, and as such the concept is capable of being mistaken.

That much I am sure you will agree with. Where we differ, is in re-defining the concept "consciousness". You hold that consciousness can be defined properly only if it is defined as being an intrinsic aspect of the "atoms" of this world (taken in the sense of elementary phenomena) because the opposite involves a contradiction.

The contradiction lies on the law of the excluded middle, and you are saying that something cannot by definition emerge from its opposite, for that would be a logical contradiction. Now we have a number of important tangent questions. Among them are "Can we use logical conclusions to make ontological conclusions?" and the related question "Is it not we who define the terms and use the logic?". So you see, my skepticism lies deeper in the application of the style of argumentation itself. While the law of contradiction may logically (or ontologically) hold true, it is we who create the distincition between opposites and so the choice of what is opposite is, to some degreee, arbitrary.

An example, so you may see where I am coming from, is the "Abstract-Concrete" dichotomy. Consider the genetic code, is it abstract or concrete? How do abstract operations arise from concrete interactions? It is concrete insofar as it requires specific complementary base pairs and molecules in order to be physically instantiated. It is abstract insofar as the "instructions" are by no means contained within the physics and the code is nearly "universal". We have a code that is transcribed and as long as the physics are equiprobable. (As you can see Thymine and Uracil are poth pyramidines and have similar molecular structure and these are typically interchangeable wrt Adenine) the information can be transmitted to different molecules, and yet is not identical or deriveable from any of them, as such it is abstract.
My reason for pointing that out was, the dichotomy itself may be ill-founded, it is we who given information, apply distinctions. So the distinctions cannot necessarily be used to proclaim ontological statements. That we believe p to be the case, does not entail p's being the case. That we believe the dichotomy to hold in this situation, doesn't imply that it must hold. Unless you are to demonstrate how we know the dichotomy holds, which I would say would be a difficult case and would most likely fall victim to Hume's problem of induction, considering we are applying a "truth of reason" to a "truth of fact".

Logic is a human endeavor, just like any other. We are applying a Boolean algebra to nature. Just like when we apply mathematical models to natural phenomena in Science, we cannot be sure that it is absolutley "true", the same goes for logically dichotomizing nature.

Given that, my problem simply lies with how I don't see how it clarifies anything as to the nature of "consciousness". It is kind of akin to when somebody says "The world is truth-functional of elementary propositions" or something, to which I say (maybe it is a limitation of my intelligence) "What does it mean for an "elementary proposition" to be true?".

Of course, always keep in mind that I may not convince you, nor you I, for we both have our non-rational inclinations and temperments. I am inclined towards not supposing that nature knows laws, wheras you may be inclined to the contrary.

 

[pftest]

While it is true that we can label things (and be mistaken) only if we are conscious, I still stick to my previous statement. "Consciousness" is not a term quite so easily given a definition. While the Being of consciousness (if you will allow me to speak in such vague terms) is given in experience, the concepts we form of consciousness are not. Exactly how we define consciousness is of the nature of a hypothesis. So, for all factual things that we label, we can be mistaken about the nature of the description applied. "Consciousness" is a concept we have labelled within experience, and as such the concept is capable of being mistaken.

Yes i agree, and also that being mistaken about something (or to have delusions, illusions, misconceptions) requires one to be conscious. Btw consciousness i always define as "having experiences". This leaves open who or what is having the experiences, what the experiences are like and whether they are material or not. It is therefor theoretically and metaphysically neutral. It just refers to experiences, of which everyone here knows what they are like.

That much I am sure you will agree with. Where we differ, is in re-defining the concept "consciousness". You hold that consciousness can be defined properly only if it is defined as being an intrinsic aspect of the "atoms" of this world (taken in the sense of elementary phenomena) because the opposite involves a contradiction.

The contradiction lies on the law of the excluded middle, and you are saying that something cannot by definition emerge from its opposite, for that would be a logical contradiction. Now we have a number of important tangent questions. Among them are "Can we use logical conclusions to make ontological conclusions?" and the related question "Is it not we who define the terms and use the logic?". So you see, my skepticism lies deeper in the application of the style of argumentation itself. While the law of contradiction may logically (or ontologically) hold true, it is we who create the distincition between opposites and so the choice of what is opposite is, to some degreee, arbitrary.

An example, so you may see where I am coming from, is the "Abstract-Concrete" dichotomy. Consider the genetic code, is it abstract or concrete? How do abstract operations arise from concrete interactions? It is concrete insofar as it requires specific complementary base pairs and molecules in order to be physically instantiated. It is abstract insofar as the "instructions" are by no means contained within the physics and the code is nearly "universal". We have a code that is transcribed and as long as the physics are equiprobable. (As you can see Thymine and Uracil are poth pyramidines and have similar molecular structure and these are typically interchangeable wrt Adenine) the information can be transmitted to different molecules, and yet is not identical or deriveable from any of them, as such it is abstract.
My reason for pointing that out was, the dichotomy itself may be ill-founded, it is we who given information, apply distinctions. So the distinctions cannot necessarily be used to proclaim ontological statements. That we believe p to be the case, does not entail p's being the case. That we believe the dichotomy to hold in this situation, doesn't imply that it must hold. Unless you are to demonstrate how we know the dichotomy holds, which I would say would be a difficult case and would most likely fall victim to Hume's problem of induction, considering we are applying a "truth of reason" to a "truth of fact".

Logic is a human endeavor, just like any other. We are applying a Boolean algebra to nature. Just like when we apply mathematical models to natural phenomena in Science, we cannot be sure that it is absolutley "true", the same goes for logically dichotomizing nature.

Given that, my problem simply lies with how I don't see how it clarifies anything as to the nature of "consciousness". It is kind of akin to when somebody says "The world is truth-functional of elementary propositions" or something, to which I say (maybe it is a limitation of my intelligence) "What does it mean for an "elementary proposition" to be true?".

Of course, always keep in mind that I may not convince you, nor you I, for we both have our non-rational inclinations and temperments. I am inclined towards not supposing that nature knows laws, wheras you may be inclined to the contrary.

Well i must start by saying that I am not declaring consciousness to be an opposite of, or distinct from the material. I am not saying there is a dichotomy. It is the physicalists/materialists who hold that consciousness is unlike rocks, atoms, etc. In their view only brains possesses consciousness, and whatever consciousness is, it is completely absent in non-brains.

While i do not understand all of apeirons arguments (and i have not read them all either), i do think his ideas are compabtible with the view that there is a degree of consciousness in everything. This is based on a brief conversation (see here) i had with him maybe a year ago.

 

[JDStupi]

Yes i agree, and also that being mistaken about something (or to have delusions, illusions, misconceptions) requires one to be conscious. Btw consciousness i always define as "having experiences".

Yes, I would agree with this definition. That is, how could we define the "Being of consciousness" without "having an experience" for the Being of consciousness just is the ground of all experience. It seems you could be seeing the Being of consciousness is the ground of all Being.

This leaves open who or what is having the experiences, what the experiences are like and whether they are material or not. It is therefor theoretically and metaphysically neutral. It just refers to experiences, of which everyone here knows what they are like

I agree with the first part and the second, so long as we are speaking about people. Once we extend the concept of "experience" beyond people, we don't know what it is like.

While i do not understand all of apeirons arguments (and i have not read them all either), i do think his ideas imply or are compabtible with the view that there is a degree of consciousness in everything. I remember i have had a brief conversation with him about this maybe half a year ago. I shall try to find it.

And this may be the case, because then you would say that the descriptions of the behaviors of the systems or what have you at various levels are extensionally equivalent to the word "consciousness". My problem is, as we know, extensional equivalence doesn't imply intensional equivalence, and the "connotations" of saying "Everything is conscious" is quite different from what most people would think that means. Simply saying "Everything is conscious" solves nothing.

Under your definition, it may be less problematic, but then it may simply be trivially true, insofar as everything must have its own POV on the universe, and if that is all that is said, then I agree. It's just the concept of "internal experience" being tied to how you or I experience, seems to lose its clarity the further from humanity we go. The only way we could extend the concept is with an abstract structure for inferencing similarities of what happens in conscious beings. This could be provided by apeiron's structures or other scientific models and then we would be able to speak about everything being "conscious", or not and in what way, but until then it doesn't seem very illuminating to say "everything is conscious". But who knows, maybe you weren't saying it was illuminating just that it was or could be and it took all of this to come to some understanding.

Funny, how we can argue so much and be not all that far off. We are just not seeing quite eye-to-eye insofar as the significance of the argument is concerned, but it doesn't seem our views are entirely incompatible or opposed. It seems we had to "show the fly the way out of the jar" and untie the "meanings" behind our speech. Even then we may not see quite eye-to-eye, but diversity is beautiful. So long as your thinking and I'm thinking and nobody is completely dogmatic (for we all have our unseen dogmas) then whatever, "Different Strokes".

 

[Math Is Hard]

Note: I've done a little pruning to back us away from the mystical angle. Carry on!

 

[nismaratwork]

The last few times i posted a handful of peer reviewed papers that supported my points (of course, they supported my points precisely because i often get my points from science). You didnt, and so it was pointed out to you by a mentor that the forum isn't an opinions column. Enough said.

Now I am afraid I am going to be a bit more brief with you because i see this isn't fruitful for discussions on PF. If you provide counterarguments then i will happily respond to them. Otherwise no.

OK, so provide them for someone else, and remember which of your posts were removed as well...

Still, here's the google you asked for!
#2 result is a locked thread... here: https://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-143833.html
#1 was Yahoo Answers asking if it is "alive or dead", which sets the intellectual bar nicely there.

The third is a reguritation of Smolin, in brief, and is just hand-waving about universal evolution.

The rest are either wrong search returns, Facebook, or utter crackpot sites (and I mean CRACKED).

Your turn.


@Pythagorean: Bigger and More, even more complexity doesn't mean alive. Life does certain things, one of which is to reproduce... I'm eagerly awaiting a baby universe. In fact, the notion of complexity as the basis for life is absurd in the view of complex inorganics, when some of those same inorganics COULD be the basis of life. Ask more, I'll offer more, offer more, I'll ask more. In the end, "the bigger it gets, the smarter it is" just doesn't hold water; only by invoking pure mystery, magic, or religion (magical mythology) does one land in a living universe.

 

[nismaratwork]

Yes i agree, and also that being mistaken about something (or to have delusions, illusions, misconceptions) requires one to be conscious. Btw consciousness i always define as "having experiences". This leaves open who or what is having the experiences, what the experiences are like and whether they are material or not. It is therefor theoretically and metaphysically neutral. It just refers to experiences, of which everyone here knows what they are like.
.

So, when a dog mistakes its reflection for another dog, it's proof of consciousness? When you clip the antennae of an insect, thus causing it confusion, it's conscious? Are you sure about that?