tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post5912406044596085717..comments2024-03-25T11:49:21.281-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: Defining "Consciousness"Eric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-89047781013392160482015-07-19T16:44:21.411-07:002015-07-19T16:44:21.411-07:00Is observation replacing consciousness...Is observation replacing consciousness...Arnoldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02580641063222662041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-84484496181402452142013-11-29T03:15:16.004-08:002013-11-29T03:15:16.004-08:00First ever casual explanation of the mechanism res...First ever casual explanation of the mechanism responsible for human consciousness (you can verify the same with your subjective experiences):<br /><br />While interacting in our day-to-day life, we need to act or react to bodily processes and the happenings in the world, sometimes instantly, to provide us beneficial outcomes. <br /><br />Consciousness is designed by the evolutionary process to allow data from such interactions that requires judgmental power to become available for making decisions, thereby benefiting from the capability of making free will decisions (If there were no free will, there was no requirement of consciousness). <br /><br />To understand how interactions are continuously scrutinized for the requirement of judgmental power and how free will decisions are made, visit http://www.whatismind.com (based on Dichotomized Operating System model - DOS model)<br />Parag Jasanihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01175505392176303813noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-79030949360488684342010-06-01T09:32:08.262-07:002010-06-01T09:32:08.262-07:00Thanks for catching that, Justin! One of the prob...Thanks for catching that, Justin! One of the problems of having open comments....Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-47283629930569114612010-05-31T15:00:29.952-07:002010-05-31T15:00:29.952-07:00Nice spam, "Paul."
Please don't cli...Nice spam, "Paul."<br /><br />Please don't click on the above link. Eric, I'd like to request that you delete it.<br /><br />Thanks,<br />-JAKJustin (koavf)https://www.blogger.com/profile/03670945149409774818noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-63311478885425660042008-05-23T15:57:00.000-07:002008-05-23T15:57:00.000-07:00I think we see eye to eye on all you just said!Low...<I>I think we see eye to eye on all you just said!</I><BR/><BR/>Low blow. I suppose obvious points were right down there with the untestable ones in Poppers book ;-)MThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341704109256270557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-42658087626829264382008-05-23T15:08:00.000-07:002008-05-23T15:08:00.000-07:00Eric, I certainly agree with you that introspectin...Eric, I certainly agree with you that introspecting and reporting about our conscious experience necessarily involves making judgements about our inner experience that can be wrong. I guess what I don't share is your pessimism about the prospects for a better scientific understanding of the nature of consciousness. I think we have made encouraging progress in understanding the kinds of brain mechanisms and systems that might constitute our phenomenal experience.arnold Trehubhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10019949314092142107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-56645168546321027242008-05-23T12:54:00.000-07:002008-05-23T12:54:00.000-07:00Thanks for the continuing discussion, folks!LifeOS...Thanks for the continuing discussion, folks!<BR/><BR/>LifeOS: I agree with what you say in the first paragraph, but I'm not sure what justified what you say in the second!<BR/><BR/>Arnold: I think we're talking past each other a bit. In the moon illusion case, I think the naive observer's knowledge about the moon's distance is false, but he may be quite right about his conscious experience. Also, I'm not sure why you think I characterize consciousness in terms of knowledge. What I meant to convey in my earlier remark is that knowledge about consciousness -- at least the kinds of judgment about consciousness that are the reportable products of introspection -- necessarily involves conceptualization and categorization.<BR/><BR/>MT: I think we see eye to eye on all you just said! (Including the non-dogmatic tone.)Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-11917349849509938922008-05-23T11:24:00.000-07:002008-05-23T11:24:00.000-07:00Even if we were to agree what kind of thing we mea...Even if we were to agree what kind of thing we mean to refer when we say "consciousness," and even though I don't know what might be agreed exactly, I suspect we'll still be identifying instances of it by means so indirect that we can be duped by ventriloquists, that we'll reasonably distrust these means except when we are applying to bodies that look human, and we won't necessarily know it to observe it in ourselves. The definition seems certain to amount to an untestable hypothesis,in other words--Popper's definition of an unworthy objective. Granted, he wasn't talking about philosophy, but even in a philosophical endeavor, if I'm right that you're shooting on something untestable, shouldn't that be troubling? I suppose "2" isn't exactly testable, yet has its uses. At least with "2" our engineers build bridges and other cool and popular stuff. What are we going to get from a precisely defined "consciousness"?MThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341704109256270557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-191899796161025252008-05-23T08:32:00.000-07:002008-05-23T08:32:00.000-07:00Eric, it seems to me that your conception of consc...Eric, it seems to me that your conception of conscious experience as knowledge is problematic. I would claim that your conscious knowledge is a only a subset of your occurrent phenomenal world. <BR/><BR/>Take the moon illusion as a good example. The moon is experienced as large when seen near the horizon, and it is experience as small when it is seen high in the sky. The naive observer typically thinks that the moon is necessarily more distant when it is overhead than it is near the horizon. This is his raw perception and his reflective experience which can be taken as his knowledge about his immediate phenomenal experience of the moon. In fact, his conscious experience of the moon illusion is neither true nor false -- it just *is* what it is. But at the same time, his *knowledge* about his own conscious experience is false because the moon is actually no farther away at its zenith than it is at the horizon. So I actually have better knowledge *about* the observer's phenomenal experience than he does. But no one can share the observer's own egocentric perspective, and therefore his conscious experience of the moon and his reflections about it remain privileged as his own conscious phenomena.arnold Trehubhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10019949314092142107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-64545204356360016832008-05-22T13:54:00.000-07:002008-05-22T13:54:00.000-07:00Thanks Eric.Yes, the million dollar question... bu...Thanks Eric.<BR/><BR/>Yes, the million dollar question... but it brings us right back to that illusive definition. If indeed consciousness is only a function of higher animals, then we can be sure that it takes more than life. However, if consciousness is a function of something more basic, like a coherent electromagnetic field, then all living creatures could possess a version of it. <BR/><BR/>I think we tend to define consciousness in strictly human terms because we have always thought we were the only conscious ones around. Most indigenous people and some eastern religions recognize the consciousness in all things. My personal experience bears this out, so i go along with them. It seems to me that the systems approach, looking at Life as a biological information processing system first, with protein as secondary output, leads to the same conclusion.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, thanks for listening.<BR/>cheers,<BR/>jimAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-56080890265882571972008-05-22T13:15:00.000-07:002008-05-22T13:15:00.000-07:00Neat blog, Jim! I don't know what it takes to bre...Neat blog, Jim! I don't know what it takes to breathe consciousness into a system, but as the case of the smart vacuum shows (<I>if</I> we're right that the vacuum does not have consciousness), mere low-level responsiveness to environment and low-level navigational abilities is not enough. So what more is needed? That's the million-dollar question!<BR/><BR/>I'm not sure life itself will do: It seems we can have life without consciousness (mushrooms, bacteria) and maybe also consciousness without life (sufficiently advanced AI? God?).Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-70382113705801453492008-05-22T11:33:00.000-07:002008-05-22T11:33:00.000-07:00Howdy Eric,The smart vacuum certainly has a built ...Howdy Eric,<BR/><BR/>The smart vacuum certainly has a built in awareness of time and the floor it must navigate. That awareness depends on sensors, a cpu, memory and algorithms, all part of the "system" that manages its behavior. That system took billions of manhours to create and yet it doesn't even come close to vacuuming skills of a catfish, for example.<BR/><BR/>What AI is attempting to do is duplicate the efficiency of natural system. What AI needs is a form of active awareness or consciousness that can make intelligent choices. <BR/><BR/>My point is that i think biological systems have already done that. We have copied all the elements of consciousness, but we can't breath life into them. The element we are missing is consciousness itself.<BR/><BR/>So, i guess my definition of consciousness is Life itself. <BR/><BR/>Over at my place, we are looking for the operating system that executes DNA. Its a manuscript in progress. Please stop by and check it out.<BR/><BR/>Cheers,<BR/>jimAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-58149222002895960252008-05-22T08:42:00.000-07:002008-05-22T08:42:00.000-07:00Thanks for the interesting discussion, folks!Arnol...Thanks for the interesting discussion, folks!<BR/><BR/>Arnold: (1.) Weak sense: I have a means of learning about my conscious experience that is different in kind from what other people have -- but not necessarily <I>better</I>. (2.) I agree we have an uninterpreted experience of the world (except insofar as interpretation is built into experience); but to become knowledge or judgment, it requires some interpretation or classification. (3.) If that's all you mean by "transparent", I'll give you that! Tye, Dretske, and Harman seem to mean more. (But exactly what more is not entirely clear.)<BR/><BR/>MT: I agree with the spirit of your remarks, but I think the problem is that we only have uncontentious knowledge of instances of consciousness in a limited range of cases. If we define it in terms of those cases only, we risk being too narrow in scope. If we explicitly include other cases, we beg the question against views that would exclude those cases. The best hope, I think, is to define it leaving <I>open</I> the contentious cases and then hope (to what extent this hope is justified I don't know) that the referent is clear enough that we're all talking about the same thing!<BR/><BR/>Jim: Would it follow that self-propelled vacuum cleaners (the sophisticated kind from MIT) would be conscious?Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-66847360551383016562008-05-22T07:59:00.000-07:002008-05-22T07:59:00.000-07:00Howdy Folks,Great discussion! Seems to me that con...Howdy Folks,<BR/><BR/>Great discussion! Seems to me that consciousness doesn't need to be so complex. In basic terms, any mobile species must possess some primary skills in order to navigate at all. First of all, it must have a way of referencing time and space. That requires memory and some way of looking at the relationship between self, non-self and motion. Seems to me that in order to navigate successfully requires at least this much awareness.<BR/><BR/>cheers,<BR/>jimAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-2738446538789253222008-05-21T16:10:00.000-07:002008-05-21T16:10:00.000-07:00Eric, thanks for alerting me to my misunderstandin...Eric, thanks for alerting me to my misunderstanding. Incidentally, I also misused "monophyletic." I think there's a word for what I had in mind, but that's not it. What you call my second point was an extension of the first--that the decision to associate or dissociate something, conceptually, with the very kind or the very category of which the decider is a member is subjective, and a decision made with an eye to the extended family of kinds. <BR/><BR/>If consciousness is a kind, it might be useful to think of what kind of a kind it is. Is it like a family or genus, to which many species of things belong--dog consciousness, plant consciousness, computer consciousness? Or is consciousness a species of thing that exists only in awake and legally competent people? <BR/> <BR/>Conceiving consciousness liberally means seeing it as existing elsewhere than in awake and legally competent people, and so viewing it as encompassing at least a genus. <BR/><BR/>By defining consciousness we game the taxonomic system. We could draw a circle around something that might seem to exist only in awake legally competent people--"language," for example (displacing the taxonomic problem to that thing we've circled). <BR/><BR/>If we wish to understand consciousness as a thing in the world, we'll recognize it as biological and define it with an eye to the neuroanatomy, physiology and behavior of other animals, so that how it evolved may become clear to us. It seems you want to use the word "consciousness" foremost for other uses and other understandings to do with subjective experience. Isn't it the very pitfall of consciousness itself to assume one word ought to work for both? If you decide you're talking about a word that's only for phenomenology, you're in a realm of very soft science, ripe for speculation. You could more or less define it as you like and anger very few.MThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341704109256270557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-65819443360926299262008-05-21T10:08:00.000-07:002008-05-21T10:08:00.000-07:00Eric, I think this is a good start.1. What is the ...Eric, I think this is a good start.<BR/><BR/>1. What is the difference between a strong sense and a weak sense of privileged knowledge? <BR/><BR/>2. If you/I were wrong about our current conscious experience, wouldn't this simply be an instance of a failure in our *understanding/classification/report* of the features of our privileged raw conscious content, rather than evidence that we do not have a privileged uninterpreted experience of the world? <BR/><BR/>3. It seems to me that cognitive phenomenology, inner speech, and emotion are phenomenologically transparent as long as we do not experience the media (the particular brain mechanisms) that carry this content.arnold Trehubhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10019949314092142107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-80368041837192878362008-05-21T09:19:00.000-07:002008-05-21T09:19:00.000-07:00Arnold, I'm not sure I have privileged knowledge o...Arnold, I'm not sure I have privileged knowledge of my own consciousness in any strong sense, since I think there are many cases where we are wrong about our current conscious experience. And I'm not sure my consciousness is "transparent" in any strong sense, either, since cognitive phenomenology, inner speech, and emotion don't seem to be "transparent" in the way that sensory experience of the external world is often taken to be transparent.<BR/><BR/>So there's a start!Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-54138325718882728392008-05-21T09:16:00.000-07:002008-05-21T09:16:00.000-07:00Anibal: I think that's an interesting argument abo...Anibal: I think that's an interesting argument about the evolution of consicousness. Nichols and Grantham made a similar argument in an essay in Philosophy of Science several years back, if I recall correctly. I'm not *sure* I'm convinced. I know you mean to exclude this, but I don't see why I couldn't be that knowledge (or something like that) is selected for and phenomenal consciousness rides along for free.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-1820033508857472072008-05-21T09:11:00.000-07:002008-05-21T09:11:00.000-07:00Thanks for the reply, MT. Unfortunately, I didn't...Thanks for the reply, MT. Unfortunately, I didn't explain my concern well enough and threw you off track. I was not thinking of rabbits as the only mammals but rather as the only mammals used as positive or negative instances in defining the term. There are still deer, sheep, etc., but my idea was that they have not been referred to one way or another in the definition. That, obviously, would be a problem!<BR/><BR/>I'm not sure I fully understand your second point: Do you think it's <I>merely</I> a conceptual question whether we count the unattended hum of the fridge as part of our consciousness? Or is there a substantive question there -- whether, we might say, one really consciously experiences that hum -- entangled with the conceptual issues?Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-38166938479952106722008-05-21T07:21:00.000-07:002008-05-21T07:21:00.000-07:00Just look around you, Eric. Don't you now have a t...Just look around you, Eric. Don't you now have a transparent phenomenal experience of the world from your own privileged egocentric perspective? If not, can you tell us why not?arnold Trehubhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10019949314092142107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-60983471960719439972008-05-21T02:18:00.000-07:002008-05-21T02:18:00.000-07:00To me conciousness is a proxy for knowledge as kno...To me conciousness is a proxy for knowledge as knowledge (information/cognition)is the general way animals and its central nervous systems have to react and adapt to a constantly changing enviroment.<BR/> <BR/>Of course most cognition is nonconcious but with increasing complexity higher forms of conciousness evolve to command with precision thoughts reflections,will, motor plans...<BR/><BR/>The metaphysical question about how electro-chemical events produce experience or matter becomes imagination (Edelman and Tononi 2000) with the blosom philosophical landscape of theories ranging from identity theories, functionalim, dualism...<BR/>its very important but not the proper question because under the light of evolution conciousness is an outstanding feature and evolution cannot produce too many spandrels or by-products. <BR/><BR/>The right question is What !%*¿?·# (bad word) function serves conciousness? and the transition from absence, lower forms and higher forms of conciousness in evolutionary timescales is almost the right question.<BR/><BR/>A. Rechtschaffen is credited to say in relation to sleep: <BR/><BR/>"If sleep does not serve an absolute vital function, then it is the biggest mistake the evolutionary process ever made"<BR/>The same we can say about conciousness.Anibal Monasterio Astobizahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03121020811080165520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-16861765537866771432008-05-20T22:41:00.000-07:002008-05-20T22:41:00.000-07:00If all your examples of non-rabbits are also non-m...<I>If all your examples of non-rabbits are also non-mammals, how do we know whether the term "rabbit" refers to rabbits or to mammals?</I><BR/><BR/>You're describing a circumstance in which the mammalia is monophyletic--rabbits (and their evolutionary antecedents as well, if I understand the concept of monophyly) representing all present and past representatives of the entire class. In such a world taxonomists or systematists would be rabbits or perhaps intelligent reptiles, and the class we call mammalia in our world would be called "Rabbitia" (unless "Leporidae" wins by a hare). This class would be a heuristic or theoretical conceit by which we place rabbits at a fitting phylogenetic distance from reptiles, based on 1) the assumption of common descent, 2) how dissimilar rabbits and reptiles seem to the systematists relative to 3) the dissimilarities between the more instantiated taxa of our system. <BR/><BR/>It's barely an academic question what are the characteristics of the class to which rabbits belong in this case. The question arises after the discovery something like but unlike rabbits--in the fossil record or an unexplored ecosystem. Then at least you are constrained to conceive the class as broad enough to encompass not only rabbits but the new things as well...unless they are classified a subspecies (highly unlikely if rabbits are the systematists in this hypothetical universe--would be like us classifying chimps as a variant of human). <BR/> <BR/><I> Similarly, if all your examples of consciousness are of focal consciousness, how do we know whether (to put it in terms of the rich view, according to which we have constant tactile experience of our feet in our shoes, etc.) the word "consciousness" refers to all conscious experience or only to focal consciousness?</I><BR/><BR/>How do we know? We just know. It depends whether we're rabbits or reptiles, as it were. i.e. According to how we conceive our consciousness, some stuff will be significantly different from our consciousness or merely a subspecies of it. Of course, it's not an individual decision. We meet at conferences annually to hash it out.MThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341704109256270557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-58081535017504958182008-05-20T14:00:00.000-07:002008-05-20T14:00:00.000-07:00Arnold, I didn't mean to imply that. I said "need...Arnold, I didn't mean to imply that. I said "needless" but what I should have said is "needless and contentious"! I find both the notions of transparency and privilege problematic, though there may be weak senses of the terms on which I agree that the epistemology of consciousness is transparent and privileged.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-63137090942456607012008-05-20T13:56:00.000-07:002008-05-20T13:56:00.000-07:00Thanks for clarifying, Tanasije! I don't see why ...Thanks for clarifying, Tanasije! I don't see why the phenomena of consciousness can't be known directly, and why the concept is gerrymandered; but I know that's a big issue!Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-11424007914959986822008-05-20T13:24:00.000-07:002008-05-20T13:24:00.000-07:00Eric,Can I take it then that you would agree that ...Eric,<BR/><BR/>Can I take it then that you would agree that consciousness is a transparent experience of the world from a privileged egocentric perspective?arnold Trehubhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10019949314092142107noreply@blogger.com