Why Do We Have Conscious Thought?

[apeiron]

There was a starting point (let's say time 0) at which our "histories" or "development" were identical a priori. So at that point, how was this overarching system of laws (including the downward causal laws) distinguish us as different? Presumably although we were essentially identical at that point, the global system still distinguished us using some "internal" address system of it's own.

So taking a concrete example, what do you take as the starting point for a human? The fertilisation of an egg? When are we ever identical in any exact fashion?

 

[SMERSH]

So taking a concrete example, what do you take as the starting point for a human? The fertilisation of an egg? When are we ever identical in any exact fashion?

I think this goes back to your previous posts about vagueness.

I think the greater the vagueness of any two systems, the more similar and indistinguishable they are.

At some point in "time" in the past, either we presumably did exist but had no "history" to speak of because this was at *exactly* time 0. In principle at this exact time, there is no difference between these identities (a sort of vague existence). However, the global constraints/laws still were able to distinguish us in order to create different histories. The difference had to be something akin to an unchanging index of "selves" that the global constraints maintained regarless of the sameness of our local selves at that point.

I think this vague existence began earlier than an egg fertilization, perhaps somewhere in the causal fabric of events before the fertilization event occured.

 

[apeiron]

I think this goes back to your previous posts about vagueness.

I think the greater the vagueness of any two systems, the more similar and indistinguishable they are.

At some point in "time" in the past, either we presumably did exist but had no "history" to speak of because this was at *exactly* time 0. In principle at this exact time, there is no difference between these identities (a sort of vague existence). However, the global constraints/laws still were able to distinguish us in order to create different histories. The difference had to be something akin to an unchanging index of "selves" that the global constraints maintained regarless of the sameness of our local selves at that point.

I think this vague existence began earlier than an egg fertilization, perhaps somewhere in the causal fabric of events before the fertilization event occured.

An egg or seed is a good example of the notion of vagueness and a developmental (as opposed to constructive) notion of logic. But what you suggest here is really trying to see one through the lens of the other still.

So a logic of vagueness would say there cannot be an exact t=0, because that would of course be a crisply definied instant. The "first instant" must itself be vague (though perhaps approximately located in some useful sense).

The other thing a logic of vagueness (in my view of it perhaps) asserts is that both the local and the global are all mixed in together in this particular view of "initial conditions". So global constraints are not themselves in existence at this first stage. The laws, or forms, or other terms used to denote global constraints, are also "yet to be born".

If you take the simple example of the development of a tree from a seed, while it is still a seed, all kinds of future are possible. The future is vague because the seed encodes an undeveloped potential.

Now if we take a packet of seeds, or collect up a handful of acorns, we can get a sense of this. Each one seems indistinguishable in that we could chose to plant anyone of them. But once one is planted and begins to express its potential, then it begins to individuate and become some crisply actual example of some more general idea.

No two oak trees are identical. The soil, the wind, the water, the ravages of insects, lightning strikes, shape each individually. Even the same tree planted twice may end up with different branching patterns because of tiny accidents or fluctuations of genetic control, hormone systems, the evironment again.

A reductionist would say we could in principle track every tiny accident back to t=0. But in a non-linear world, where butterfly wing flaps show that measurement errors compound exponentially, is this really so? Can we look backwards in time to recover exact initial conditions (as opposed to vaguely approximate ones) from a process of development?

Now the seed of course is a package of global constraints in representing a genome - an evolutionary history of learning that specifies what generally makes good sense when you want to be something like an oak tree. The genome predicts a generalised environment and even a range of genetic responses (adaptations to the variety of habitats and challenges that may be encountered). But each seed is also a slight variation on the general mixture. So also already individuated from its fellow seeds by the fertilisation process. A pre-fertilised germ cell in a flower is in an even vaguer state.

Anyway, if we accept that consciousness develops along with the nervous system that is its physical expression, then there can be both moments of obvious transition, yet no actual crisp transition moments. Local and global interactions are so entangled - as between the genes of a seed and the multiple choices force upon it by fate and the environment - that they are never clearly separated. Especially right at the beginning.

When does a foetus become conscious? Does it matter that a baby is born with its cortex still largely unwired and non-functional? When does a child first learn to introspect through social learning and the scaffolding tool of self-addressed language?

A logic of vagueness, of development, is about letting go of the need for crisp certainty in terms of either micro-causes, and even the global macro-causes, during first moments. Once things are developed, through the synergistic interaction of local and global potential, then they do become irreversibly crisp particular things, like this oak tree, or that person.

 

[petm1]

By what device do I determine something does or doesn't have consious thought?

Glasgow Coma Scale is the test we give for consciousness, a tree will score a three, a rock will not score because it is not alive. This common test is a quick easy way to test a persons awareness of their present, which I see as the only part of a living being that exists solely in the present.

 

[SMERSH]

An egg or seed is a good example of the notion of vagueness and a developmental (as opposed to constructive) notion of logic. But what you suggest here is really trying to see one through the lens of the other still.

So a logic of vagueness would say there cannot be an exact t=0, because that would of course be a crisply definied instant. The "first instant" must itself be vague (though perhaps approximately located in some useful sense).

A logic of vagueness, of development, is about letting go of the need for crisp certainty in terms of either micro-causes, and even the global macro-causes, during first moments. Once things are developed, through the synergistic interaction of local and global potential, then they do become irreversibly crisp particular things, like this oak tree, or that person.

I have a great deal of regard for the general concept of vagueness, however I think it lacks a "completeness" to it. It's hard to describe clearly but it in seems to completely abandon any unchanging universal "absolutes".

Yes, a lot of modern physics seems to chip away at any "absolutes" in terms of for example time/space etc, but I think carrying this relativism too far results in a sense of "areality" - there is no real, there is just the relative, in sense therefore nothing really matters at all. Also relativism seems forever trapped within the limitations of "time".

However, I think "relatives" and "absolutes" are a sort of symmetry that must coexist equally for reality to both "have an absolute truth" and simultaneously allow "change" and allow time to exist. Forgive the cliche but a sort of "yin/yang" duality.

By "absolutes" I mean unchanging perfectly conserved "things" that have always been and will always be - timeless. By "relatives" I mean the set of all changing, unconserved and emergent "things" such as included in the concept of vagueness.

These "absolutes" in my mind are an unchanging index that ultimately distinguish all subsets of the universal "multiverse" or "whole" whatever this may be. These "absolutes" would be in my mind the part of the multiverse that is INDEPENDENT of time and steps outside the relevance of time.

 

[apeiron]

I have a great deal of regard for the general concept of vagueness, however I think it lacks a "completeness" to it. It's hard to describe clearly but it in seems to completely abandon any unchanging universal "absolutes".

Good point, but in fact a logic of vagueness does give you universals. Vagueness is your raw initial potential (the unbroken symmetry that stands the beginning of "time" or change) and then absolutes arise as your crisp limits of the resulting breaking of this symmetry, of the process of change or development. So absolutes are reached "at the end of time". Or when the phase transition that is breaking the symmetry has run its course to some new equilbrium in other words.

So, as Peirce argued, absolutes develop into crisp actuality. They are where you eventually arrive.

So in vagueness, there is neither flux nor stasis (but by definition, the potential for both). Then in a crisply developed realm like our universe, there is a definite separation into spatial and temporal dimensionality - the static locations and the global changes.

And modern physics even treats space and time, stasis and flux, as complementary limits of a developed state of things. That is where relativity comes in.

It is all yin~yang as the ancient taoist and buddhist traditions came to the same early conclusions as ancient greek philosophy. When metaphysical symmetries break, the most complete possible breaking is always dichotomistic or complementary. To crisply have something, you must then just as crisply have everything that it is not.

So to have well defined stasis, you must have exactly what stasis is not - which is flux.

Or to have well defined continuity (to use another standard greek example) you have to have also the opposing limit state of everything continuity is not - the discrete.

To attempt to imagine vagueness then is to attempt to imagine a realm which has restored an original symmetry, a realm in which you can't tell the difference between stasis and flux, the discrete and the continuous, etc.