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Consciousness
Theories as to the origin and meaning of our experience

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Consciousness

ragus
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Posted 10/22/09 - 01:08 PM:	#111
mway wrote You simply need an agent (a computer game character for example), and that agent requires an internal state that changes based upon environmental input. This is it's phenomenal state. For example, if red comes as input, the internal state changes to 'I am seeing red'. You neither have to define 'red' itself (as it doesn't really exist), or the 'I' (as that doesn't exist either). If you scaled the complexity of this crude agent way up, and included many non binary variable states that were altered not only by the environment but the other states as well, and the ability to store temporal memories, you would end up with a self conscious machine. Never mind self-consciousness - when and how does your machine become conscious?
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mway
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Posted 10/22/09 - 03:28 PM:	#112
ragus wrote: Never mind self-consciousness - when and how does your machine become conscious? You are looking at this the wrong way. The machine doesn't become conscious. Consciousness is an illusion (it is software). Everyone seems to think that the 'I' is a thing, and the explanation of experience needs to be discovered. I am saying that experience and 'I' are both software communicating to each other. There is no need to complicate it.
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bert1
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Posted 10/22/09 - 10:00 PM:	#113
You simply need an agent (a computer game character for example), and that agent requires an internal state that changes based upon environmental input. Are you just limiting conscious agents to virtual entities, like computer game characters, or can anything fitting this requirement be conscious, for example, could an atom that gains some energy, thus changing its internal state, be conscious? Is your evidence of consciousness a changing internal state? If so, why is a changing internal state an experience? Another difficulty I have with your software theory of consciousness is that I'm not sure how much of a natural unity it has. In terms of hardware, where does one piece of software start and another stop? Is a conscious agent already presupposed by the concept of software? Doesn't software need to serve a function for an agent in order to get its unity? Also, it doesn't really explain how a patterning of switching in hardware could be conscious, at least not satisfactorily for me. How can a piece of software, for example, change, at will, its focus of attention, bringing something of peripheral awareness into sharper focus, and then back again to the periphery? But you don't believe that consciousness can do that, because you don't believe that consciousness really exists at all... so maybe this isn't a problem for you. Presumably you do think that software exists, in some sense, maybe when it is running on a computer. In what sense does software exist, and in what sense doesn't it? I think one reason people don't always engage much with your views on consciousness is because they simply think you are wrong about consciousness not existing. It seems real, and seeming real is being real, as far as consciousness is concerned. Or that's how it seems to me anyway
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mway
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Posted 10/22/09 - 10:33 PM:	#114
bert1 wrote: Are you just limiting conscious agents to virtual entities, like computer game characters, or can anything fitting this requirement be conscious, for example, could an atom that gains some energy, thus changing its internal state, be conscious? Is your evidence of consciousness a changing internal state? If so, why is a changing internal state an experience? Another difficulty I have with your software theory of consciousness is that I'm not sure how much of a natural unity it has. In terms of hardware, where does one piece of software start and another stop? Is a conscious agent already presupposed by the concept of software? Doesn't software need to serve a function for an agent in order to get its unity? Also, it doesn't really explain how a patterning of switching in hardware could be conscious, at least not satisfactorily for me. How can a piece of software, for example, change, at will, its focus of attention, bringing something of peripheral awareness into sharper focus, and then back again to the periphery? But you don't believe that consciousness can do that, because you don't believe that consciousness really exists at all... so maybe this isn't a problem for you. Presumably you do think that software exists, in some sense, maybe when it is running on a computer. In what sense does software exist, and in what sense doesn't it? I think one reason people don't always engage much with your views on consciousness is because they simply think you are wrong about consciousness not existing. It seems real, and seeming real is being real, as far as consciousness is concerned. Or that's how it seems to me anyway I agree with about why people disagree, it is intuitive to imaging consciousness as "something". If you take it to the atomic level, then I would have to agree, that anything with an internal state effected by, and effecting the environment is consciousness. I can't see any way of getting around that without creating a contradiction. There are always definition problems here, I mean, I agree that one could argue software exists, but there is no objective way to describe it (it is simply relative). As I write this, I am thinking that consciousness, or software could simply be said to exist subjectively only. With response to your query about how can attention focus change at "will". This can be explained if you look at the brain as a continuous input/output system that outputs both to itself and the environment. Whilst you may "feel" that there is a will, and "you" are willing a change in focus, it is in fact the system itself just acting on inputs. This post has been written in quite a rush, but it does sound like you are on the ball with your counter analysis. I would love for everyone to post reasons why they don't think a pure software analogy works for consciousness. Perhaps we can make some headway.
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ragus
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Posted 10/23/09 - 05:02 AM:	#115
mway wrote I am saying that experience and 'I' are both software communicating to each other. So brain states (soft features) communicate and produce illusions. How does software generate an illusion. Outline a program that has this as a side-effect or as a necessary outcome. There is no need to complicate it. Maybe you're oversimplifying, or worse, misunderstanding the problem..
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

onisani
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Posted 10/23/09 - 12:59 PM:	#116
reincarnated wrote: Are you absolutely sure that other humans ARE conscious, and if so, why? I am absolutely sure that other humans are conscious. Your question suggests that you are not, which is odd. People do things that require consciousness. Learning, speaking etc. are things that unconscious agents cannot achieve. In fact, I think those capabilities give rise to consciousness. The better something performs, the more conscious it will be.

reincarnated
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Posted 10/25/09 - 06:50 AM:	#117
onisani wrote: I am absolutely sure that other humans are conscious. Your question suggests that you are not, which is odd. People do things that require consciousness. Learning, speaking etc. are things that unconscious agents cannot achieve. In fact, I think those capabilities give rise to consciousness. The better something performs, the more conscious it will be. Sorry, but my question about your beliefs logically suggests nothing at all about my own beliefs. If I ask you whether you are absolutely sure that God exists, and why, does my question necessarily imply that I do NOT believe in God? Of course not. I am simply interested to know WHY you believe that other humans are conscious. And your answer tells me a lot - for some reason you seem to think that only conscious entities could ever be able to learn and speak? This is the kind of reasoning which Searle's Chinese Room argument shows is fallacious. One could in theory construct a machine which could learn and speak just as well as any human being, but it does not follow that the machine would be conscious.
crumpled bits of paper, filled with imperfect thoughts... we all talk a different language, talking in defence... and if you don't give up, and don't give in, you may just be ok... (Mike & The Mechanics, "The Living Years")

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Posted 10/25/09 - 07:04 AM:	#118
Dragohunter wrote: Wrong, consciousness is the causal relations for both the awareness of perception and conscious experience (for example, if a computer sent electrical signals into your nerves to cause your arm to rise, it isn't the same experience of you raising your arm at will). This is what gives the qualitative data that confuses both philosphers and cognitive scientists. I don't find that confusing. It's just the experience of electrocution. There is still awareness of the arm rising, a perception of it. The main disparity is if awareness continues after brain death. I think it could in the sence that a dream of ten minutes might seem like many hours to the dreamer, so perhaps the final second of thought seems to be eternally long to the guy we all think is dead. I have never died though.
I know that I don't know, so I don't know if I do.

reincarnated
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Posted 10/26/09 - 02:14 AM:	#119
bert1 wrote: In order to get the kind of unity we have in phenomenal experience, I think consciousness must be a unity in this strong sense. And because I reject substance dualism, I have to identify consciousness with something 'natural', something on that list. It can't be a point or a black hole, because consciousness does not destroy its contents. Anything squashed into a point loses its character. Therefore, for me consciousness must be a field extended in space or space itself, as these relate and unify their contents without destroying them. I don’t believe consciousness actually IS a “unity” in the strong sense you have described – although I do understand how most of us have the illusion of such a conscious unity. To me, consciousness is just a connected series of disparate phenomenal events with the common denominator that our brain tries to refer these events back to what I call a logical “centre of narrative gravity” (a fictitious logical locus within the mind where, we tell ourselves, “it all comes together”) – and our brain then links together this series of phenomenal events in such a way that it appears (within our conscious interpretation) that we are an entity which is undergoing some kind of single “unified” experience. You might ask: Why does our brain spin this illusion? The answer (I believe) is because it is much easier to make empirical sense of the world (of the multitude of sense impressions being processed by our brains) if the brain concocts a “linear story” wherein there seems to be a single well-defined observer (a “unity”, the “self”) who is somehow apart from and yet experiencing a sequential series of connected and unified events. bert1 wrote: There are certainly examples of disunity in consciousness, split brain effects, subconscious processes, content slipping in and out of consciousness, desires which condition our actions but which we are not continually aware of. You also list examples. But I don't need to assert the unity of consciousness in such a holistic way for my argument to go through (even though I do think that consciousness is absolutely holistic). I just need to show that consciousness, within one of its splits, is unified. And I think I can. Hearing the sound of the TV is a holistic experience. If the individual element of “hearing the sound of the TV” is really a holistic experience (and I’m not saying I agree that it is), then how can you claim that the entirety of consciousness (which is made up of many such individual contributions to your overall conscious experience) is also holistic? Surely, if “hearing the sound of the TV” is a holistic experience, then the sum total of consciousness is a collection of such individual experiences, and thus is not itself holistic? Your holistic unity of consciousness (if it exists) is surely something which cannot be decomposed or reduced to lesser experiences (isn’t that what holistic or unity means?), and yet you talk about individual contributions to such experience? bert1 wrote: There are many auditory signals, one from a half a second ago is remembered, which is related to the one you are hearing now, both are labelled as belonging to yet another thing, your concept of the TV, which is in turn an amalgam of boxishness, communication, flashing lights, and a whole load of other stuff. All this stuff is bound together in an experience of hearing the TV. I take it that if you still think that binding happens, that you also think that consciousness, when the binding does happen, is unified. You perhaps just don't think that all experience is bound into one global whole. Is that right? I do indeed believe that our brains attempt to “bind together” the individual phenomenal inputs into one seemingly global “whole” (what we call our conscious experience), but the feeling of unity or holism is (I claim) simply an illusion created by the story-telling that the brain indulges in as part of this binding process – it’s a fairy-tale that your brain is creating, because its much easier to make sense of the world if one interprets conscious experience as some kind of genuine ”unity” rather than as a disconnected and disparate set of unrelated events. How can you possibly derive a genuine holistic unity from a series of bound-together disparate signals (the very idea of deriving an alleged unity from underlying disparity in signals contradicts the claim of genuine unity)? What you describe fits perfectly with my interpretation – one in which “there are many auditory signals” as well as visual and other signals which are somehow “brought together” - processed by the brain and then (logically and seemingly) bound together in a process which tries to connect these signals into a linear “story-telling” model, relating the various signals to a fictitious centre of narrative gravity, with a key part of the story-telling (the interpretation generated by the brain) being the creation of an artificial observer (the “self”) who is somehow “at the centre of it all” and is undergoing a unified conscious experience. Whether the signals are genuinely “bound together” or not is in fact not important – it is only important (from the perspective of trying to make sense of the world) that they “seem to be” bound together. Anyone who has spent much time studying illusions (optical as well as other types of illusions) will easily understand the interpretational tricks that our brains play on us all the time, without our conscious selves being aware that any kind of trick is being played. reincarnated wrote: Perhaps this "centre of narrative gravity" is the "unified consciousness" you speak of? bert1 wrote: With qualifications, perhaps, yes. Crucially, I just don't think it's artificial, and nor it is a 'centre' in the sense of a point, because a point can't relate anything together without destroying the things it attempts to relate. But a 'centre' in the sense of a spatially extended field simultaneously aware of its contents, then sure. I don’t mean “centre of narrative gravity” in the sense of a single physical point in Cartesian space – I mean it in the sense of a logical centre, a locus of logical space. The brain, in doing what it does to try and best interpret the various signals coming from the world, spins a story which connects together these disparate signals by inventing a logical common denominator, in effect the brain constructs sequences of the form “I am the person hearing the sound of the television”, “I am the person smelling the lilies on the table”, “I am the person feeling the smooth hardness of the tabletop under my fingers” – and thereby creates a logical connection (“I am the person”) between the various signals it is processing, which we then call the “self”. But this “self” does not reside at any particular point (or even volume) in space, rather it is delocalised within the entire mental process, it is a logical centre/self and not a physical centre/self. Of course I understand that you don’t think the centre of narrative gravity is artificial – and this is (I believe) one of the biggest problems that people have in understanding and accepting the true nature of consciousness. Its not easy to accept that our most precious possession, our “self”, does not exist in isolation but is somehow just the consequence of a fictitious story which is being spun by our brains. Its much easier for (most of) us to believe that there is a genuine and real “homunculus” somewhere within us which is (logically) at the centre of it all and is somehow experiencing it all. But once you accept the ridiculousness of the notion of an homunculus, and follow to their conclusion the logical consequences of rejecting the homunculus, I think you’ll find that the notion of “self” is just a construction of the brain, a construction that is created as part of an interpretational story. bert1 wrote: I really like your description of how it feels to be aware that you give above, especially the shifting of our focus of attention. It seems to me a lot like a spatially extended field introducing stresses and strains within itself, centring itself around certain parts of the brain, perhaps, the parts which are responsible for processing that bit of experience that one is concentrating on at that particular time. While doing so we remain only 'dimly' aware of other parts of our 'field' of awareness exactly because the field is not concentrating (centring itself) on those parts. Don’t you see how this constant shifting in and out of awareness, of being acutely aware of some things and dimly aware of others, with priorities and focus shifting continuously to take in new information and drop old information, fits much better with the model I have described (the brain bringing together bits and pieces of disparate information and trying to create a unified story for itself) than it does with the notion of a genuine holistic unity? Dragohunter wrote: That is closwer to what I think, but I'd rather think consciouness is a system rather than a sequence. I think we’re nitpicking on terms. A dynamic process can be viewed as a system or as a sequence, I have no problem calling it a system if you prefer that term (this system still operates according to a dynamic process). Dragohunter wrote: Consciousness experience is rather produced by a sequence of perceptions and reactions at the instant that you feel a certain level of awareness. Yes – except that the “you” referred to here is actually created as part of the storytelling that goes on in the brain when the brain processes a “level of awareness” – thus its not that “you” exist as some distinct entity (sans awareness) and then “you” feel a certain level of awareness (this is the illusory story that your brain is spinning), rather its that your brain is trying to make sense of the various input signals it is processing, and empirically the best way to make sense of these signals (the best way to interpret the world) involves spinning a story which connects all of these signals back to a logical “self” or centre of narrative gravity. You ARE (created by) the experience, as opposed to you are HAVING the experience. In the words of Antonio Damasio, you are the music while the music lasts. Kadu B. wrote: I don't think your reasoning is wrong, I just think it leaves the phenomenon of qualia out of the equation. Could you please explain what you mean by the word “qualia”? throng wrote: I think consciousness is awareness of perception, or perception of awareness. I don't think there's any difference. It’s awareness, period. Awareness by definition must be “of something”. shappy wrote: My position is that your model will merely simulate self-consciousness. And if self-consciousness is a simulation, then your model will be a simulation of a simulation... so what? A model is not necessarily a simulation. If I make a lifesize model of a motor car, including all the working components of a “real” motor car and with all the defining properties and characteristics of a motor car, in what sense is my model then “merely a simulation” of a motor car, and not actually a motor car? If I create a computer model which is able to play chess as well as or better than any human, would you insist that the computer is only "simulating" playing chess, and is not actually playing chess? If it actually "plays chess" according to the rules of chess, and is able to beat humans at the same endeavour, would you still insist that it is "merely a simulation" of something which can play chess? shappy wrote: Where did the simulation of self-consciousness come from? What generated the process? A process is simply a sequence of states. Processes happen all the time in the natural world. Evolution (competitive advantage) is the explanation for why the processes of consciousness have been singled out for preferential replication (as opposed to non-conscious processes). shappy wrote: If you ever actually construct such an agent and together discuss the meaning of life, where will that leave you? What have you understood about consciousness? What have you understood about yourself? You will have understood that consciousness is nothing “magical”, but can be explained or replicated based on natural processes; you will have understood that consciousness is simply a very special property of some particular reflexive processes which emerges when those processes take place; you will have understood that physicalism explains the world, and dualism is false. shappy wrote: This entire exercise is a means to keep the "self" relevant. It's not and it can't be. I’m not sure what you mean here? mway wrote: The machine doesn't become conscious. Consciousness is an illusion (it is software). Everyone seems to think that the 'I' is a thing, and the explanation of experience needs to be discovered. I am saying that experience and 'I' are both software communicating to each other. There is no need to complicate it. I disagree that consciousness is an illusion – and I can understand why many dualists would reject physicalism because they wrongly believe that physicalism says that consciousness is an illusion. I agree that consciousness is not a “physical” thing like a solid object – but consciousness is nevertheless very real – it is a special form of reflexive process. Some entities possess it, others do not. bert1 wrote: I think one reason people don't always engage much with your views on consciousness is because they simply think you are wrong about consciousness not existing. It seems real, and seeming real is being real, as far as consciousness is concerned. Or that's how it seems to me anyway Agreed. Edited by reincarnated on 10/26/09 - 02:24 AM
crumpled bits of paper, filled with imperfect thoughts... we all talk a different language, talking in defence... and if you don't give up, and don't give in, you may just be ok... (Mike & The Mechanics, "The Living Years")

onisani
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Posted 10/26/09 - 02:16 PM:	#120
reincarnated wrote: Sorry, but my question about your beliefs logically suggests nothing at all about my own beliefs. If I ask you whether you are absolutely sure that God exists, and why, does my question necessarily imply that I do NOT believe in God? Of course not. Apologies, got you wrong there. reincarnated wrote: One could in theory construct a machine which could learn and speak just as well as any human being, but it does not follow that the machine would be conscious. The machine you describe would be able to give me career advice, cheer me up when I'm sad, discuss philosophy, make spontaneous jokes, be polite or rude when appropriate, etc. Speaking "just as well as a human being" include all those things. I think a machine which achieves that would be conscious. In fact, it would be human in an important sense.

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