Does Consciousness Exist?

[Sci-2]

It is a bit crazy isn't it - that even if we can accept our own consciousness, there's no way to prove anyone else isn't just a really fancy meat computer passing the Turing Test?

Why I said consciousness itself is "paranormal enough", something I think Chalmers really makes clear when he notes Laplace's Demon couldn't predict it's arising. :-)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Sciborg,

My problem with the Turing Test is that it isn't really testing for Conscoiusness. It's testing to see if a programmer can design an algorithm that can successfully mimic human speech patterns.

[Sci-2]

Oh, I agree - all I meant is I could be sitting across from you at a table, having this conversation, and I would no way to definitively prove that you are a conscious entity rather than a living thing with no internal awareness.

[And vice versa of course. Even my winning personality isn't proof of consciousness. ;-P]

[Relic]

Tzanth,

So, consciousness revolves around self-awareness?

I don't understand this question either. What else would it revolve around?

According to the dictionary -

the state of being conscious; awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Relic,

It's not that simple. The definition is pretty vauge to begin with. I don't think we have a universally agreed upon method to determine whether consciousness actually exists. Hence my opening question regarding "Materialism" and a belief that humans are "conscious".

[Opisthokont]

Yeah, I don't think consciousness and self-awareness are equivalent either. I don't see any logical obstacles to someone experiencing a stream of consciousness without being aware of their own existance. After all, there are disassociative drugs that can make you believe that you do not exist, though that may be something slightly different.

[Relic]

Yeah, I don't think consciousness and self-awareness are equivalent either. I don't see any logical obstacles to someone experiencing a stream of consciousness without being aware of their own existance. After all, there are disassociative drugs that can make you believe that you do not exist, though that may be something slightly different.

A stream of consciousness...what do you mean by that? I have a very very hard time disassociating consciousness and self awareness. So much so that i'd use a word other than consciousness in the OP.

[Opisthokont]

A stream of consciousness...what do you mean by that? I have a very very hard time disassociating consciousness and self awareness. So much so that i'd use a word other than consciousness in the OP.

A continuous sequence of conscious thoughts. Awareness of whatever you're experiencing or thinking about, but not necessarily self-awareness.

[Ser Greguh]

I don't see how positing a non-materialist universe provides any kind of satisfactory explanation to the consciousness question, and I'm a bit confused at the insistence of its relevance to the topic.

[Sci-2]

I don't see how positing a non-materialist universe provides any kind of satisfactory explanation to the consciousness question, and I'm a bit confused at the insistence of its relevance to the topic.

Has anyone suggested a non-materialist universe is necessary?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Sciborg,

I'm not. I'm asking if having "Consciousness" as an abstract concept is consistent with a materialist view of the universe?

[Sci-2]

I think there actually is little to talk about if one starts bringing in notions of a non-material universe. After all, at that point you can say, "It's magic!" or "Consciousness is *everything*!"

It's within the framework of the (largely) materialist perspective that it becomes interesting, even if one holds to some possible dualism or variation of panpsychism.

[Oigres]

Scot, just because something is not well-defined (in your opinion) does not mean it does not exist. Art is not well-defined, and what is one person's art may be another's paint splotches. But just because we cannot define precisely the boundaries of art, does not mean that there is no art.

What humans have is consciousness, because consciousness is defined as what normal humans experience while awake. And what humans experience while awake is the result of a large number of electro-chemical processes occurring between neurons in our brains. These processes are definitely real and measurable.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Oigres.

Consciousness is what humans experience while awake? Isn't that a tad circular? Further don't other animals experience similar electrochemical reactions?

[Ken Stone]

You can think of consciousness as a bunch of things wrapped together, like a bundle of sticks. Self-awareness, future-awareness, past-awareness, logical thinking, abstract thinking, metaphorical thinking, etc. Certain animals have certain of these traits, but only humans have all of them. It's a spectrum, not a dichotomy. It fits into a materialistic view pretty easily, because any of the individual "sticks" that make up consciousness can be lost when you suffer damage to certain parts of the brain.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Ken,

That still sounds circular to me. You are defining "consciousness" as what humans perceive and think about. How do we know our perception and and thought patters are different from other animals?

[slim da reaper]

You can think of consciousness as a bunch of things wrapped together, like a bundle of sticks. Self-awareness, future-awareness, past-awareness, logical thinking, abstract thinking, metaphorical thinking, etc. Certain animals have certain of these traits, but only humans have all of them. It's a spectrum, not a dichotomy. It fits into a materialistic view pretty easily, because any of the individual "sticks" that make up consciousness can be lost when you suffer damage to certain parts of the brain.

What you're saying is akin to David Hume's 'bundle theory of mind'.

Within each stick is there not a variance in quality? Even if within say 'logical thinking' that the experience is definably the same, levels of quality are not that would lead to making consciousness a almost worthless attribute. I think the bundle theory has much going for it, I also agree with the definable nature of bundles to an extent but not the absolute definable nature of all possible types of bundle (in fact each individual entity's bundles being unique to them but sharing 'family resemblance' to others.) I do not agree with all humans having all types of bundles that just is not the case Heidegger's Facticity, Falleness and Existenz might exist for each conscious being but to what level is understanding of these categories natures achievable varies hugely among people.

[Oigres]

Oigres.

Consciousness is what humans experience while awake? Isn't that a tad circular? Further don't other animals experience similar electrochemical reactions?

No, it is not circular. It is not circular because it is not an argument, but merely a definition. We know beyond doubt that something is occurring in our brains to allow us to experience awareness. We call that something consciousness. Is it circular to say that the color "green" is what normal humans perceive to be the color of leaves? We have certain terms to describe the ways that the vast majority of us experience the world around us. People do not make threads about whether or not the color green exists. We know that color is an electrochemical process ocurring within the brain in response to the detection of a certain wavelength of light by certain cells on the retina of the eyes. Color is one of the processes that make up consciousness.

Now, do animals have consciousness? Well, consciousness is not a single process but an amalgamation of many processes. I will use my color example. Blind people do not perceive color, but we still consider them conscious. So sensory perceptions are not necessary for our common usage definition of consciousness. Is self-awareness, the ability to perceive that one is an individual, a pre-requisite? Perhaps, that is up to you to decide. Some animals have self-awareness, and others do not. See the mirror test. In the end, it's all a matter of what you think the definition of consciousness requires.

TLDR:

1. Consciousness is not a single neural process, but composed of many separate processes.

2. Whether or not one or more of these processes is crucial for consciousness is merely a question of definition.

3. Different species may be more or less conscious than others, with humans being the most conscious.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

This is from a friend who is a computer science professor:

Indeed, at a group lunch between psychologists and CS people a few years ago when I wondered aloud, "I'm not sure there is such a thing as a consciousness." There followed an awkward silence, then sputtering incredulity. I've wondered whether what we perceive as consciousness is merely an unintended by-product of the way our minds reason rather than the other way around. Perhaps we are "aware" only as an artifact of the complex system operating between our body and the environment. Of course, in some strict sense, we aren't aware of even a fraction of what our world or our brain is doing. And, again in some strict sense, a mouse isn't completely unaware.

I frequently get Cognitive Science students in my machine learning class, and often they opine that the computer "doesn't really *understand*" ... and I typically retort, "And you do *really* understand?" Philosophy is fun and interesting, but at the end of the day I'm interested in how and how well algorithms do or do not work.

Computers can generalize from experience to increase performance on tasks over previously unseen experiences; they can develop behaviors that increase long-term rewards based on short-term immediate rewards (a la operant conditioning); they can solve solve complex, abstract logical problems very efficiently; and they find relationships in data that we, as humans, have not seen. It's true that they aren't yet as flexible solving machines as humans, capable of taking lessons learned from one type of problem to a radically different kind of problem the way we can. But if a man's capability to do this were significantly degraded because of an accident, would we decide he was no longer of "human intelligence"?

We are currently teaching our daughter how to use facts about doubles addition to help her with addition in general (4+4=8, so 4+5 = 9) ... which is an algorithm. Does that mean that her employment of this technique is not "intelligent"? Or is it "artificial" intelligent? Does she really *understand* arithmetic completely? Do I? Do you? It all seems very angels-on-pins'ish to me. Sometimes requiring clarity in our terms is a way to avoid the tough questions, but more often its a way to discard the nonsensical and unanswerable ones.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Now bouncing for real see the post above.