Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Consul
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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

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Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 am
Consul wrote: November 12th, 2019, 6:21 pmBy "consciousness" I mean phenomenal consciousness = subjective experience. I do not mean intelligence or awareness, i.e. cognition or perception (as defined in cognitive science)! Neither do I mean knowledge or memory!
So what you are stating is that bacteria, fungi, and plants do not have subjective experience.
Exactly! They are not subjects of experience or experiencers.
Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 amIn reality, it is difficult to prove that any specie has subjective experience, even humans…
That's true. There's the famous epistemological problem of other minds/consciousnesses: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/

Given this problem, theoretical speculation is unavoidable; but there's still a big difference between highly plausible or probable assumptions and wildly implausible or improbable ones.
Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 am…as we can easily state that all consciousness is physiological and not psychological.
By distinguishing between (mere) physiological sensitivity and psychological sentience, I do not mean to imply that psychological (mental/experiential) phenomena are nonphysiological or nonphysical in the sense that materialism/physicalism about them is false. For I'm merely saying that there is a relevant difference between (ontologically) objective, nonexperiential sensitivity (and corresponding faculties) and (ontologically) subjective, experiential sentience, and that the former doesn't per se include the latter.
Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 amWe have decided that subjectivity requires a brain, but conversely, we will not confirm that all species with a brain also possess subjectivity. These rules on subjective experience are too inconsistent for me to see any truth in them.
The scientific evidence available strongly confirms that brains are necessary for (ontologically) subjective states of organisms (= subjective experiences). There's no deductive logical proof they are, but it's by far the most plausible and most justified assumption in the light of our scientific knowledge.

As far as I know, the first animals with a central nervous system (brain) were flatworms called planarians. Whether they are subjects of experience is a matter of speculation, but it seems probable that all animals with brains are subjects of experience (of some primitive sensations at least). For once an organism is equipped with the requisite organ of consciousness, what prevents it from becoming and being conscious?
Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 amWithout language, subjectivity would be a difficult thing to prove, but I will try it with plants. The reason I chose plants is that they have a somewhat unique ability to grow where they want to grow and actually manipulate the growth of their bodies.

Take a seed from a tree and plant it where it can get just enough sunlight and water to grow, but it is slightly under a large piece of concrete. If it has enough of what it needs to survive, the tree will grow slightly crooked until it is above the concrete, then it will straighten itself to it's correct form pushing the concrete away or breaking it up. Decades later, there would be no indication that it started with a twisted form unless you cut it down and examined it's rings at the root. Most people would agree that it achieved it's correct form because of it's DNA. I agree.

Then take another seed and plant it close to a river that frequently jumps it's banks causing erosion. Decades later, you may find a malformed tree that has actually corrupted it's natural form in order to prevent itself from falling into the river. Trees in this situation will grow their roots into solid earth and actually grow extra limbs over the solid earth in order to preserve it's balance and it's life. These extra limbs are not natural to the tree, do not comply with the balanced form of the tree, but do conform to the balance of the situation. To me this indicates subjective experience and an effort to preserve the self.
Plants have astonishing fitness- and survival-enhancing behavioral abilities, and I can accept terms such as "plant intelligence"; but what I don't accept are terms such as "plant experience" or "plant consciousness", because a plant's attempts at self-preservation aren't evidence for the presence of subjective experience in it. On the contrary, what plants provide evidence for is how much can be done successfully (achieved or accomplished) without any consciousness. There can be high degrees of dynamic functional and informational complexity in a material system lacking any subjective, experiential dimension (sophisticated AI robots being examples).
Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 amSo do you think that tree sensed the pull of the river, was afraid, and imagined growing extra branches as a solution? I, myself, have no idea of how trees do this. (chuckle)
No, I don't think trees (subjectively) sense, feel, or imagine anything. There's a book titled "Intelligent Complex Adaptive Systems", and plants are examples of such systems. But there's a relevant difference between nonconscious, nonexperiencing ICASs and conscious, experiencing ones, because an ICAS needn't be an EICAS, an Experiencing Intelligent Complex Adaptive System.
Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 amMy thoughts on this are similar. I tend to think of awareness as causing a kind of bond. When you see a horse, an image of that horse is in your mind, but the horse it not. You have a mental bond with that horse (image), then you bond other thoughts, sensations, memories, etc., to the image of the horse building imagination.
My point is that visually imagining a horse is similar to visually perceiving (seeing) a (physical) horse. So-called mental images of something are simulated sense-impressions of it.
Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 am
Consul wrote: November 12th, 2019, 6:21 pm Consciousness started evolutionarily with primitive sensations. If I'm informed correctly, the first and oldest sense is touch (tactile sensations).
I can agree that the first physical sense was probably touch, but I have a problem with this. Tell me, what is the difference between a chemical reaction and a sensation? To me, a sensation differs because it sends a communication somewhere, whereas a chemical reaction does not necessarily communicate. So if first life did not have a brain, then where was the sense information sent? What received the information? I keep coming back to the idea that it had to be sent to the life form itself -- which would make some form of consciousness come before sensation could even exist.
First of all, I use "sensation" solely to refer to a sort of subjective experience; so all sensations are (ontologically) subjective by definition. This is not to say that sensations aren't physicochemical processes, but only that no such process is a sensation (in the psychological/phenomenological sense of the term) unless it involves subjective sensory qualia (sensa) which are innerly felt by organisms.

"The irreducible minimum involved in mentality would seem to be the fact which we express by the phrase 'feeling somehow', e.g., feeling cross or tired or hungry. It seems to be logically possible that this characteristic, which we might call 'sentience', could belong to a thing or event which had no other mental characteristic."

(Broad, C. D. The Mind and its Place in Nature. 1925. Reprint, Abingdon: Routledge, 2000. p. 634)

The physicochemical mechanisms of action, reaction, interaction, and communication that we find in brainless animals, plants, protozoa, and bacteria work well without any subjective qualia/sensa. These organisms are all nonconscious "zombies".
Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 am
Consul wrote: November 12th, 2019, 6:21 pm I think consciousness is a binary on-off affair in the sense that for all times t, an organism is either (determinately) conscious at t or (determinately) nonconscious at t.
Our thoughts differ here. I see simple awareness as something that is always on, but I see focus as directing it, turning it on and off, and guiding the strength of it. Focus would come from matter, so if the focus is too strong or dense, there is no awareness (like a rock). Intermediate focus could produce life, and different chemistry or make up would dictate how much, and of what, life can be aware. I have been playing with the idea that focus and awareness in balance is what causes intelligence. If the focus is too weak, we end up with awareness without focus -- which we tend to call Nirvana or "God".
There's a difference between objective awareness defined in purely functional-informational terms and subjective awareness defined in experiential terms (= phenomenal consciousness). Objective awareness (of information) can be ascribed to nonconscious "zombie agents", and even a device such as a motion detector can be said to be objectively aware of its environment.

Subjective awareness/consciousness/experience is not "always on". For example, it's off during a dreamless sleep and during general anesthesia.
Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 am
Consul wrote: November 12th, 2019, 6:21 pmIt follows that there must have been some moment in the course of biological evolution when the "ignition" of consciousness took place in some individual belonging to some species. There's a difference between the evolutionary prehistory of consciousness and its evolutionary history and development, which begins with its sudden original "ignition".
Our thoughts also differ here. Prior to consciousness, there were no species. All life forms of ALL species have survival instincts; this means that they have some feeling/emotion, awareness, and knowledge. This is not something that I made up, it is taught in biology that all species have survival instincts. For some reason, we have decided that consciousness can only come from a brain, so these survival instincts in other species have to be different. They are not. The survival instincts in all life line up very comfortably with Freud's drives in the Id, so I am talking about mind. If you think instincts and drives are different, please explain to me how they are different. While you are at it, explain why we can manipulate the hell out of a cell, but we can not synthesize one -- we can not start life.
An instinct is…

"1. an innate propensity to emit a relatively fixed response to a stimulus. 2. Any natural and apparently innate drive or motivation, such as those associated with sex, hunger, and self-preservation." (Oxford Dictionary of Psychology)

"an innate tendency to behave in a particular way, which does not depend critically on particular learning experiences for its development and therefore is seen in a similar form in all normally reared individuals of the same sex and species. Much instinctive behaviour takes the form of fixed action patterns. These are movements that once started are performed in a stereotyped way unaffected by external stimuli." (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)

"behaviour that occurs as an inevitable stereotyped response to an appropriate stimulus, sometimes equivalent to species-specific behaviour." (Henderson's Dictionary of Biology)

The presence of certain instincts in all biological organisms doesn't entail and isn't even evidence for the presence of phenomenal consciousness/subjective experience in them.
Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 amMy thought is that people associate mind with brain, so they limit their own knowledge of what is and must be true. Subjectivity and minimal consciousness started with life, then as physical life evolved, so did consciousness until it reached the human consciousness that we experience.
If brains are unnecessary for consciousness, what alternative consciousness-realizing organs or organismal mechanisms are there in organisms which lack a central nervous system or even a nervous system?
Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 amIf there was an "ignition", it happened a long time ago, and I doubt that it happened in a singular event.
Do you have a coherently intelligible concept of a borderline state of (phenomenal) consciousness which is neither definitely a nonexperience nor definitely an experience? – I haven't. (See my argument in a previous post of mine!)
Gee wrote: November 19th, 2019, 12:45 am
Consul wrote: November 12th, 2019, 6:21 pm Consciousness/experience is something in addition to those functional abilities and processes! A "cognitive mind" isn't per se a conscious mind! Note that I'm not saying that having a cognitive mind is not necessary for having a conscious mind, but only that it is not sufficient unless a cognitive mind has the functional and structural complexity of a central nervous system (brain).
I agree that a cognitive mind is not necessarily a conscious mind, as in AI. Can you see that a conscious mind is not necessarily a cognitive mind?
I don't think a cognitively totally dysfunctional mind/brain can be a conscious mind/brain. The Oxford Dictionary of Psychology defines "cognition" broadly as "the mental activities involved in acquiring and processing information", so a cognitive mind/brain is an information processor (a neurobiological CPU); and there can be no experiencing mind/brain without an information-processing mind/brain. Consciousness is integrated into the cognitive architecture of the mind/brain (which is not to say that consciousness is reducible to cognition or intelligence).
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

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Consul wrote:I don't think a cognitively totally dysfunctional mind/brain can be a conscious mind/brain. The Oxford Dictionary of Psychology defines "cognition" broadly as "the mental activities involved in acquiring and processing information", so a cognitive mind/brain is an information processor (a neurobiological CPU); and there can be no experiencing mind/brain without an information-processing mind/brain. Consciousness is integrated into the cognitive architecture of the mind/brain (which is not to say that consciousness is reducible to cognition or intelligence).
Consul, you do a good job of selling the theory that consciousness evolves from the advanced capabilities of a "mind/brain".

You must realize that your best efforts to sell that thesis is contrary to the theories of Nagel, Whitehead and Searle. These "dual aspect" philosophers accept "consciousness" as one fundamental aspect of reality that just is and does not have to evolve. An amoeba is conscious. The advanced neurological systems, or brains, that evolve in a multicellular organism are organs that integrate the conscious experience of the organisms cells to facilitate the organisms specialized sensorial interaction in the world.

In your understanding of the world the organism remains a "zombie" until it gets a brain.

In the world of dual aspect philosophers the organism is conscious from its birth and it evolves a neurological system, brain and sensory equipment, to serve the attachments and awareness of its lower, neurologically, conscious cells.

Quit trying to "explain" consciousness. It just gives you an "explanatory gap". Focus on how the consciousness of cells gives rise to mereo-logically integrated specialized sensory organs.
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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

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Why is Western philosophy still clinging to the idea that phenomenal consciousness / qualia has something to do with life anyway? Science showed us that organisms and rocks are just arranged differently. So why so scared to question the above assumption?
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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

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Atla wrote: November 21st, 2019, 11:52 amWhy is Western philosophy still clinging to the idea that phenomenal consciousness / qualia has something to do with life anyway? Science showed us that organisms and rocks are just arranged differently. So why so scared to question the above assumption?
Because there are no good reasons to doubt that to have consciousness is to have a conscious life, and that consciousness is a neurobiological phenomenon.
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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

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Consul wrote: November 21st, 2019, 12:11 pm
Atla wrote: November 21st, 2019, 11:52 amWhy is Western philosophy still clinging to the idea that phenomenal consciousness / qualia has something to do with life anyway? Science showed us that organisms and rocks are just arranged differently. So why so scared to question the above assumption?
Because there are no good reasons to doubt that to have consciousness is to have a conscious life, and that consciousness is a neurobiological phenomenon.
Irrationality at its best. Clinging to the belief that there is something magical about life.
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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

Post by Gee »

Bluemist wrote: November 16th, 2019, 9:46 am
Gee wrote: November 14th, 2019, 4:43 pm
:)
This agreement seems like a good place to start. Reality can only be my reality and no one else's. I live in my reality. My reality is such as it is because I only have partial access to what's really happening in my mind. My tastes, likes, fears, feelings, impulses, moods, and even my memories are only partially accessible to my awareness whether that be while I am awake or asleep. Just because dreams are different than sensations, perceptions and reflections does not make dreams any more real.

I agree with some of this, even though it seems to have a solipsistic flavor, but have to ask; are dreams any less real? Or are they just less rational?
Bluemist wrote: November 16th, 2019, 9:46 am Dreams receive no new outside sensations but not free from sensations arising directly from the unconscious mind or even from the uncontrolled body.
Dreams can receive outside stimulation, whether from the senses, hearing, smell, and touch, or from the unconscious, which is communal. People often forget that the unconscious is communal, so they don't realize why "God" ideas, psychic ideas, and premonitions, or ideas that are out of time, often originate in dreams -- because that is the time when we are most in touch with the unconscious.
Bluemist wrote: November 16th, 2019, 9:46 am Plato who, according to my take, asked all the right questions even when his arguments and his suggested answers failed, held that the mind is seen by the mind's eye just the same as it sees the outside world. Both are continuous and ever-changing thus unknowable. Therefore, the mind looking either out or into itself cannot provide 'true' knowledge. There is no truth either in the empirical world or in the subjective mind.
And yet, truth is by nature subjective.
Bluemist wrote: November 16th, 2019, 9:46 am This is where people who conclude that 'I think therefore I exist' go wrong. Descartes only said that 'I think therefore I am'. In French, just as in English and Greek, I am is just an ordinary word and not the logical-mathematical Parmenidean-Aristotelian 'exist'. Without exceptions, for anything to exist it must be an object for philosophy to be logically consistent.
"I am" denotes a state of being, which can be real whether or not it "exists".
Bluemist wrote: November 16th, 2019, 9:46 am One thing to consider is that exist is absolute and that reality, besides being purely subjective and private to me, also has degrees, modes, conditions, and so on. Exist is not identical to real, nor even equivalent and interchangeable in use.
I agree that for something to be real, it is not required that it exist; on the other hand things that exist are usually real.

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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

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Consul wrote: November 16th, 2019, 11:55 am
Gee wrote: November 16th, 2019, 8:23 amEvolution did not start with a brain that devolved to bacteria then evolved to humans -- it did not work that way. That is the way religion worked, first there was a brain (God) that started life that evolved into humans.
Being an immaterial soul, God is brainless and bodyless.

"That God is a person, yet one without a body, seems the most elementary claim of theism."

(Swinburne, Richard. The Coherence of Theism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. p. 101)
Either you missed the point entirely, or you are arguing to detract from the point. Evolution does not always take a straight path and can occasionally backtrack or move sideways, but it did not start with a brain -- be it computer or natural, or any other type of predetermined idea. Anyone who says it did is either speculating, theorizing, making assumptions, or using beliefs. Evolution does not work that way.

If you want to discuss "God" ideas, we can, but at another time, as it is not relevant to my point.
Consul wrote: November 16th, 2019, 11:55 am
Gee wrote: November 16th, 2019, 8:23 amThe reality is this: If evolution is in any way correct, then there would have been no reason for a brain to evolve prior to consciousness/awareness. Early minimal brains were essentially a gathering point for information acquired by the senses, so brains evolved in order to organize the sense's information. That information which was sensed is awareness of something -- it was and is consciousness. So the senses had to have come before the brain. Awareness/consciousness came before the brain.
No—unless you define these terms in such a way that having awareness or consciousness is independent of being a subject of experience (sentience).
I don't see how you got that out of what I stated. Wait; are you still assuming a brain is required for subjective experience? No. A brain is only required in order to know you have subjective experience.

I see awareness, consciousness, sentience, perceiving, sensing, and any other description of consciousness in a life form as all being different levels of the same thing -- consciousness. I also see all of these categories in life forms as all having a subjective "self". A subjective self is required in order for it to be a life form.
Consul wrote: November 16th, 2019, 11:55 am Psychological sentience is evolutionarily preceded by neurological sensitivity in the form of neuronal stimulus-response mechanisms, the latter of which is evolutionarily preceded by pre-neurological physiological sensitivity. Central nervous systems (brains) are evolutionarily preceded by non-centralized nerve nets (as we find them e.g. in jellyfish), and these are evolutionary preceded by non-neuronal stimulus-response mechanisms (as we find them in archaea, bacteria, protozoa, and even in plants). So there is a physiological and neurological prehistory of (phenomenal) consciousness/(subjective) experience, and neurophysiological sensitivity is necessary for psychological sentience; but it's not sufficient. The crucial step in the evolutionary prehistory of subjective sentience was the process called cephalization: "The concentration of sense organs, nervous control, etc., at the anterior end of the body, forming a head and brain, both during evolution and in the course of an embryo's development."
This was very interesting right up to the point where I started underlining. At that point the researchers made the assumption that a brain was necessary for mind and for "self", which causes subjective experience.

The truth is that we have no idea of what the parameters of mind are, and self is one of the most confusing subjects that I have ever seen. I don't think anyone truly understands it, but we make a lot of assumptions.
Consul wrote: November 16th, 2019, 11:55 am "Prokaryotes, i.e., bacteria and archaeans, are the simplest organisms, and they exist since the beginning of biological evolution. Despite their apparent simplicity, they are equipped with relatively complex mechanisms for orientation in their environment and consequent survival. We find sensory receptors for nutrients and toxic substances, a separation between sensorium and motorium and finally a short-term memory serving the detection of chemical gradients. At the level of eukaryotic protozoans, many of the mechanisms of cellular signal recognition and processing (including action potentials) as well as cellular movement mechanisms (ciliary, ameboid), which are found at the level of multicellular organisms, are already present. No wonder, because these metazoans are nothing but assemblies of eukaryotic unicellular organisms."
(p. 76)

"The basic organization of organisms for the control of a behavior that promotes survival and reproduction is as old as life itself. Already at the levels of bacteria and eukaryotic unicellular organisms (protozoans), we find the fundamental organization of behavioral control into a sensory, integrative, and a motor part. This includes a short-term memory, and with this, a minimum of information processing. In multicellular animals above the level of sponges, true nerve cells and diffuse nerve nets originated. From there two basic lines of development diverged. The first and minor one is the evolution of ring-shaped nervous systems in cnidarians and ctenophorans (the former ‘‘coelenterates’’); the other, and dominating one, leads to nervous systems of bilaterally organized animals, with a supra- or circum-esophageal ganglion located in the head and nerve cords being highly variable in number and extending throughout the body of the animals. This evolutionary bifurcation between cnidarians-ctenophorans and bilaterians took place about 600 million years ago or even earlier. At this time, we already find near ion channels, neuroactive substances (transmitters, neuropeptides, neurohormones), electrical and chemical synaptic transmission mechanisms and simple ways of learning and memory formation, together forming the ‘‘language of neurons.’’"
(pp. 265-6)

(Roth, Gerhard. The Long Evolution of Brains and Minds. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013.)
The above tells me that life is really old, which I knew. It also tells me that some form of consciousness (sentience) was already present as far back as we can know -- so far. What does this have to do with the evolution of minds?

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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

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Consul wrote: November 16th, 2019, 12:05 pm
Consul wrote: November 16th, 2019, 11:55 am…and neurophysiological sensitivity is necessary for psychological sentience…
This is certainly denied by substance dualists and spiritualist substance monists, according to whom no physiological or physical mechanism whatsoever is necessary for consciousness/experience. But how could an incorporeal soul without any sense organs and without any internal mechanisms processing sensory information have any sensations?
Good point. And I agree with you.

But the topic of consciousness is vast and much more complex than most people ever consider. We constantly try to reduce the idea to something that we can understand; hence, all of the "ists" and "isms" that have evolved to try to explain consciousness. There is room for most of these "isms" in a comprehensive theory of consciousness, even dualism and spiritualism, but you have to delve into the unconscious aspect of mind, "self", and bonding, in order to try to make sense of it.

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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

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Consul wrote: November 16th, 2019, 12:14 pm
Consul wrote: November 16th, 2019, 11:55 amNo—unless you define these terms in such a way that having awareness or consciousness is independent of being a subject of experience (sentience).
For example:

"Awareness can be broadly analyzed as a state wherein we have access to some information, and can use that information in the control of behavior. One can be aware of an object in the environment, of a state of one's body, or one's mental state, among other things. Awareness of information generally brings with it the ability to knowingly direct behavior depending on that information. This is clearly a functional notion. In everyday language, the term 'awareness' is often used synonymously with 'consciousness,' but I will reserve the term for the functional notion I have described here. …
Consciousness is always accompanied by awareness, but awareness as I have described it need not be accompanied by consciousness. One can be aware of a fact without any particular associated phenomenal experience, for instance. However, it may be possible to constrain the notion of awareness so that it turns out to be coextensive with phenomenal consciousness[.]"


(Chalmers, David J. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. p. 28)

Chalmers' functional-informational concept of awareness can be applied to (phenomenally) nonconscious things; but this objective, nonexperiential awareness is different from subjective, experiential awareness (consciousness).
Well, I usually like Chalmers and respect his opinions, but I have to ask a question first. "The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory" is about what? Is it about human consciousness/animal consciousness, or is it about conscious life?

I would like to be sure of the context before I respond.

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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

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Consul wrote: November 16th, 2019, 12:40 pm
Gee wrote: November 14th, 2019, 3:00 pmI don't know anything about photons or neurons, so I can't even guess at that. What consciousness does with information is the million dollar question, isn't it? It applies to the point of consciousness and probably the point of life.
The "million dollar question" is how objective sensory information developed into subjective sensations.

"This further question is the key question in the problem of consciousness. Why doesn't all this information-processing go on 'in the dark', free of any inner feel? Why is it that when electromagnetic waveforms impinge on a retina and are discriminated and categorized by a visual system, this discrimination and categorization is experienced as a sensation of vivid red? We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. There is an explanatory gap (a term due to Levine 1983) between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it."

(Chalmers, David. "Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness." 1995. Reprinted in The Character of Consciousness, 3-28. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. p. 8 )
That would be the ten million dollar question! I am now on page 8. Catching up.

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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

Post by Consul »

BigBango wrote: November 21st, 2019, 3:57 amConsul, you do a good job of selling the theory that consciousness evolves from the advanced capabilities of a "mind/brain".

You must realize that your best efforts to sell that thesis is contrary to the theories of Nagel, Whitehead and Searle. These "dual aspect" philosophers accept "consciousness" as one fundamental aspect of reality that just is and does not have to evolve. An amoeba is conscious. The advanced neurological systems, or brains, that evolve in a multicellular organism are organs that integrate the conscious experience of the organisms cells to facilitate the organisms specialized sensorial interaction in the world.

In your understanding of the world the organism remains a "zombie" until it gets a brain.

In the world of dual aspect philosophers the organism is conscious from its birth and it evolves a neurological system, brain and sensory equipment, to serve the attachments and awareness of its lower, neurologically, conscious cells.

Quit trying to "explain" consciousness. It just gives you an "explanatory gap". Focus on how the consciousness of cells gives rise to mereo-logically integrated specialized sensory organs.
As for the philosophers you mention, Searle definitely rejects panpsychism and fundamentalist property dualism. According to his biological naturalism, consciousness is realized by and in brains (only). As far as I know, Nagel considers panpsychism without affirming it, and Whitehead is a panpsychist indeed.

The idea that consciousness/experience is "one fundamental aspect of reality" is absurd. How could a single cell, molecule, atom, or elementary particle possibly sense or feel anything. Does it have tiny eyes, ears, or noses that enable it to see, hear, or smell something, to have visual, auditory, or olfactory sensations (sense-impressions)? How could conscious beings always have been present in the universe—even in the superhot post-big-bang plasma?

"Panpsychism is surely one of the loveliest and most tempting views of reality ever devised; and it is not without its respectable motivations either. There are good arguments for it, and it would be wonderful if it were true—theoretically, aesthetically, humanly. Any reflective person must feel the pull of panpsychism once in a while. It’s almost as good as pantheism! The trouble is that it’s a complete myth, a comforting piece of utter balderdash. Sorry Galen, I’m just not down with it (and isn’t there something vaguely hippyish, i.e. stoned, about the doctrine?)."

(McGinn, Colin. "Hard Questions: Comments on Galen Strawson." Journal of Consciousness Studies 13, no. 10/11 (2006): 90–99. p. 93)

"Then there is the question of the need for a brain.We normally suppose that one of these is pretty useful when it comes to having a mind, indeed a sine qua non (even if it’s made of silicon); we suppose that, at a minimum, a physical object has to exhibit the right degree of complexity before it can make a mind. But the panpsychist is having none of it: you get to have a mind well before even organic cells come on the market, before molecules indeed. Actually, you get mentality—experience—at the point of the Big Bang, fifteen billion years before brains are minted. So brains are a kind of contingency, a kind of pointless luxury when it comes to possessing mental states. It becomes puzzling why we have them at all, and why they are so big and fragile; atoms don’t need them, so why do we? And this puzzle only becomes more severe when we remind ourselves that the panpsychist has to believe in full-throttle pre-cerebral mentality— genuine experiences of red and pangs of hunger and spasms of lust. As Eddington puts it, the mental world that we are acquainted with in introspection is a window onto the world of the physical universe, and the two are qualitatively alike: introspection tells us what matter is like from the inside, whether it is in our brain or not. But then the brain isn’t necessary for the kind of experiential property it reveals to us; it is only necessary for the revealing to occur. What is revealed by introspection is spread over the entire physical universe. In fact, it would not be stretching a point to say that all bits of matter—from strings, to quarks, to atoms, to molecules, to cells, to organs, to animals—are themselves brains. There can be brains without brains! But if so, why bother with brains?"

(McGinn, Colin. "Hard Questions: Comments on Galen Strawson." Journal of Consciousness Studies 13, no. 10/11 (2006): 90–99. pp. 96-7)

"One last point: Galen says he has got used to crediting particles with experiences, so impressed is he with the problem-resolving power of this move; but why stop there—why not credit space with experiences? That is, if experience is everywhere that matter is, why not say that it is also everywhere that space is—empty space included? That region of space between the earth and moon, for example—it pullulates with experience. Since nothing is required of bits of matter for them to have experiences (no neurons or functional complexity), why not extend to space the courtesy of recognizing its mentality? After all, most of the brain —like all lumps of matter—is mainly empty space, and maybe this space itself contributes to the mind (the right density of matter is needed if human mentality is to take off).We know from physics that matter and space are deeply interwoven, so it is unlikely that such a fundamental property of matter as mindedness would not spill over to space, which is the medium in which matter has its being. So I fearlessly propose extended panpsychism: experience exists at every point in the spatial universe, whether occupied by matter or not. You may think me extravagant, but you must surely concede the explanatory power of my hypothesis, and it has a wonderful simplicity and symmetry to recommend it. So I invite my more conservative panpsychist colleagues to join me in extending panpsychism to the limit; and if they will not, I would like to hear their objections—my rule being that they must not recapitulate the objections to conservative panpsychism that I have just been citing."

(McGinn, Colin. "Hard Questions: Comments on Galen Strawson." Journal of Consciousness Studies 13, no. 10/11 (2006): 90–99. p. 97)

"[P]anpsychism is metaphysically and scientifically outrageous. We are being invited to believe that bits of rock and elementary particles enjoy an inner conscious life, on the strength of an a priori argument about how complexes of matter like animals can have minds. But why did we not acknowledge this fact before we came upon the problem of supervenience? Because, simply, mere matter gives no signs of having mental properties, either behavioural or physiological; so there would be no saying what mental states these bits of matter possessed. Are we to suppose that rocks actually have thoughts and feelings which they happen to be unable to communicate? Also, do the mental properties of the constituents of matter have any causal powers? Presumably they must if they are to give rise to mental states that do but how is it, then, that particle physicists have not had to reckon with such causal powers in developing their theories of matter? If the mental properties of electrons bear upon how they will behave, then predictions about them will not be derivable from their physical properties alone: but we know this not to be the case—so the mental properties would have to be declared causally inefficacious. Clearly these accusations of absurdity could be multiplied."

(McGinn, Colin. The Character of Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. p. 34)

"What should we say about this theory? Let us begin by distinguishing a strong and a weak version of panpsychism. The strong version says that all matter has conscious states in the straightforward sense in which organisms have conscious states: neurons in my brain literally feel pain, see yellow, think about dinner—and so do electrons and stars. That is, conscious states as we experience them in ourselves are found throughout animate and inanimate nature. It is very hard to take this strong version of the theory seriously, and there are a number of decisive objections to it. First, regular matter gives no sign of having such mental states: things simply do not behave as if they are in pain or want a drink of water. Their inner lives would have to be radically private, sealed off from any manifestation in the behavior of the objects that harbor them. A rock might be composing music to itself without there being the slightest indication of this in its behavior.

Second, physicists have discovered no reason to attribute sensations and thoughts to atoms and stars. They get on perfectly well without supposing matter in general to have mind ticking away inside it. If electrons have mental properties, these properties make no difference to the laws that govern electrons. It might be said in reply to this that mental properties have no causal powers, so that it is not surprising that physicists have not had to take notice of this pervasive aspect of matter. The trajectory of a particle or star is not affected by what it is feeling and thinking, because these mental states cannot affect anything. The trouble with this reply is that it makes our minds similarly epiphenomenal, since our minds are supposed to be composed of the mental states possessed by matter before it is formed into our brain. But our minds do affect our behavior, which is why we give every sign of having an inner life.

Third, if all matter has full-blown thoughts and feelings, why do organisms need nervous systems to think and feel? Why not just install a simple particle in my head and hook it up to my body? Surely the complexity and form of the brain is necessary to possessing a mind in the full sense. But that is hard to square with the idea that even rocks have thoughts and feelings just like you and me. So it really cannot be that panpsychism is true in the strong sense. The idea is ludicrous, is it not?

But what about in the weak sense? Granted that atoms do not have full-blown mental states, might they not have mental states in a degraded or attenuated sense? The trouble is that it is hard to know what this sense is supposed to be. It cannot mean just faint and fleeting conscious states, the kind you might have when going off to sleep, because that approach is really just the strong version of the theory again, and has all the same problems as before. We can hardly suppose that rocks are (sometimes? always?) in mild pain and thinking hazily about dinner, while we feel intense pain and have sharply focused thoughts. No, the idea must be that rocks have what are sometimes called protomental states, states that can yield conscious states while not themselves being conscious states. This convenient label contrives to suggest that the states in question are both mental and also premental. They are not quite fully mental, but they are such that they produce mentality when combined appropriately. A protomental property is defined as one that is capable of giving rise to mental properties without being actually mental—fully, properly, literally. These properties have the potential for mentality in them, the germ.
The rock does not then feel pain, literally, but it has the right properties to give rise to pain if and when its materials take up residence in a real brain. If an atom from a potato finds its way into your brain after being digested, then it will trigger consciousness in you in virtue of properties it had before it became part of cerebral tissue. The picture thus created is this: matter from the inanimate world finds its way into the brain of an organism, and it produces consciousness in that organism in virtue of the protomental properties it had before ending up there, where protomental properties are defined as whatever properties of matter make consciousness possible.

The problem with this theory should now be obvious. It is empty. We knew where we were when presented with the strong version of panpsychism: the pervasive mental properties are just ordinary mental properties. It is not credible that all matter is thus mentally endowed. But the weak version merely says that matter has some properties or other, to be labeled 'protomental,' that account for the emergence of consciousness from brains. But of course that is true! It is just a way of saying that consciousness cannot arise by magic; it must have some basis in matter. But we are not told anything about the nature of these properties. Nor are we told how they produce consciousness. Of course matter must have the potential to produce consciousness, since it does it all the time. But to state that truism is not to provide a theory of consciousness; it simply restates the problem. In fact, weak panpsychism of this kind is virtually indistinguishable from the mysterianism I have been defending. I hold that there are unknown properties of matter that explain consciousness; weak panpsychism says much the same thing, except that it erroneously uses the word 'protomental' to pack some explanatory punch. Whether these properties are knowable is a further question, which panpsychism can answer either way. What both theories agree on is that consciousness depends upon heretofore unidentified properties of matter. That's fine, but let's not dress up this admission of ignorance into a pseudo-theory."


(McGinn, Colin. The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World. New York: Basic Books, 1999. pp. 96-100)

"According to Galen Strawson, there could be no such thing as ‘brute emergence’. If we allow that certain x’s can emerge from certain y’s in a way that is unintelligible, even to God, then we allow for anything: for something to emerge from nothing, for the concrete to emerge from the abstract. To suppose that experiential phenomena could emerge fromwholly non-experiential phenomena would be to commit ourselves to just such a brute emergence, to enlist in the ‘Humpty Dumpty army’ for life, with little chance of honourable discharge. It is this revulsion for the notion of brute emergence which leads Strawson to hold that the only viable form of physicalism is panpsychism, the view that the ultimate constituents of the physical world (which I will follow Strawson in calling ‘ultimates’) are essentially experience-involving. Unfortunately, panpsychism is also committed to a kind of brute emergence which is arguably just as unintelligible as the emergence of the experiential from the non-experiential: the emergence of novel ‘macroexperiential phenomena’ from ‘microexperiential phenomena’.

Any realistic version of panpsychism must hold that certain macroscopic physical entities, at least human beings or parts of them, have conscious experience, conscious experience which is presumably very different from the conscious experience of ultimates. On the assumption that these experience-involving macroscopic entities are wholly constituted of physical ultimates—there are no souls— we must suppose that the experiential being of macroscopic physical entities is wholly constituted by the experiential being of physical ultimates. Strawson consents to all this. Somehow thousands of experience-involving ultimates come together in my brain to constitute the ‘big’ experience-involving thing that is the subject of my experience. But it is perfectly unintelligible how this could be."


(Goff, Philip. "Experiences Don't Sum." In: Galen Strawson et al., Consciousness and its Place in Nature, edited by Anthony Freeman, 53-61. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006. pp. 53-4)
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Consul
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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

Post by Consul »

Atla wrote: November 21st, 2019, 1:15 pm
Consul wrote: November 21st, 2019, 12:11 pmBecause there are no good reasons to doubt that to have consciousness is to have a conscious life, and that consciousness is a neurobiological phenomenon.
Irrationality at its best. Clinging to the belief that there is something magical about life.
I'm not sure what you mean by "magical", but I'm a materialist thinking that all nonliving beings, all living beings, and all conscious living beings are variously complex physical systems of elementary particles. It doesn't follow that there aren't any structural and functional differences between those systems which make it physically impossible for nonanimals (and brainless animals) to become and be subjects of consciousness/experience.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Atla
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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

Post by Atla »

Consul wrote: November 21st, 2019, 9:35 pm
Atla wrote: November 21st, 2019, 1:15 pmIrrationality at its best. Clinging to the belief that there is something magical about life.
I'm not sure what you mean by "magical", but I'm a materialist thinking that all nonliving beings, all living beings, and all conscious living beings are variously complex physical systems of elementary particles. It doesn't follow that there aren't any structural and functional differences between those systems which make it physically impossible for nonanimals (and brainless animals) to become and be subjects of consciousness/experience.
It does follow unless proven otherwise, I don't see the point of lying about the issue of consciousness.

Or tell us, in which physics books did you read that P-consciousness suddenly appears when matter is arranged in a certain way (= magic happens)? What was found is how matter in the head correlates with the 'contents' of experience.
True philosophy points to the Moon
BigBango
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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

Post by BigBango »

Atla wrote: November 21st, 2019, 10:28 pm
Consul wrote: November 21st, 2019, 9:35 pm

I'm not sure what you mean by "magical", but I'm a materialist thinking that all nonliving beings, all living beings, and all conscious living beings are variously complex physical systems of elementary particles. It doesn't follow that there aren't any structural and functional differences between those systems which make it physically impossible for nonanimals (and brainless animals) to become and be subjects of consciousness/experience.
I think Atla has a point. Consul, you are simply pushing the materialistic argument for "consciousness" like someone who tries to answer all the questions about the nature of consciousness, its feel/qualia, using only the limited knowledge science has about physical objects. Ockham's razor was never meant to simplify explanation by discarding the complexity that is necessary to really understand what is happening. Pushing off the "explanation" of consciousness to the development of a complex neurological system that evolves into a "brain" is just marking time, using third person objective behavior of physical things as a hope to explain consciousness while avoiding the necessary, scientifically unsupported, nature of "subjectivity".

Electrons do not "feel", molecules do not "feel" Prokaryotes feel and have lived in colonies that began billions of years ago. They feel because they are "conscious" subjects that have instantiated themselves in our familiar physical world. The evolution of their instantiation in our physical world is what led to the particulars of our organism's specialized multicellular neurological systems of organs and brains.
Atla wrote: It does follow unless proven otherwise, I don't see the point of lying about the issue of consciousness.

Or tell us, in which physics books did you read that P-consciousness suddenly appears when matter is arranged in a certain way (= magic happens)? What was found is how matter in the head correlates with the 'contents' of experience.
BigBango
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Re: Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

Post by BigBango »

Consul, I would appreciate your explanation as to how the third person description of consciousness will ever lead to a first person understanding of what it is like to be in the world.
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