Is consciousness nothing-in-itself?

[Straw Dog]

Ever consider that consciousness may not actually exist? Complex chemical interactions making us feel aware, but ultimately we are nothing more than matter changing form. To me it is just another word to describe another peculiar form or property that matter takes. It is not something which exists separately or independently.

Consciousness seems to require material embodiment, but it doesn't seem to be just reducible to brain activity alone. Whenever someone imagines hiking their favorite mountain trail, a brain scan cannot reveal the images, feeling, etc. of it like a film because the experience doesn't just exist as part of the brain's chemistry, but as an active intention and relationship with a real location and activity 'out there'.

Awareness only creates appearances. Where does the meaning related between different collections of appearances come from? Is there a continuity created between the past and the future? What is this temporal transcendence we have over our facticity that allows us to perceive and act towards meaningful possibilities?

 

[Runewolf1973]

Consciousness seems to require material embodiment, but it doesn't seem to be just reducible to brain activity alone. Whenever someone imagines hiking their favorite mountain trail, a brain scan cannot reveal the images, feeling, etc. of it like a film because the experience doesn't just exist as part of the brain's chemistry, but as an active intention and relationship with a real location and activity 'out there'.

Awareness only creates appearances. Where does the meaning related between different collections of appearances come from? Is there a continuity created between the past and the future? What is this temporal transcendence we have over our facticity that allows us to perceive and act towards meaningful possibilities?

I think millions of years of evolution has just in a way programmed our complex system of chemicals and molecules to act and react in certain ways. Chemical signals from the outside world create like an imprint on the chemicals within our brains. The brain in it's complexity can transform these "imprints" into meaningful things, colors, appearances. Our ability to remember things, is simply the brains ability to retain those chemical imprints. It is complex for sure, but I do believe it can be reducible to chemical/physical processes. Basically everything can be reduced to chemical or physical processes, so why should consciousness be any different? I think imaginations and meanings are just the resurfacing of those chemical imprints, likely triggered by yet another chemical signal.


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[Runewolf1973]

So why does one person feel, percieve, act and react differently than another person? Why does one person think one way and another person thinks the other way? What give us this feeling of individuality or personal awareness? I believe it is simply the fact that every persons particular chemical arrangement is just slightly different than everyone elses. No two people will think exactly alike because chemically they are not exactly alike to begin with. Hence the reason why Hugo Boss cologne might smell good on me, but it might not smell as good on someone else because their chemical make-up is just slightly different. That slight chemical/physical difference makes us individuals.

 

[Anatta]

So why does one person feel, percieve, act and react differently than another person? Why does one person think one way and another person thinks the other way? What give us this feeling of individuality or personal awareness? I believe it is simply the fact that every persons particular chemical arrangement is just slightly different than everyone elses. No two people will think exactly alike because chemically they are not exactly alike to begin with. Hence the reason why Hugo Boss cologne might smell good on me, but it might not smell as good on someone else because their chemical make-up is just slightly different. That slight chemical/physical difference makes us individuals.

What leads you to believe this? Since everyone's life experience is also different, why do you prefer to account for individuality by attributing it to a "particular chemical arrangement", rather than to particular life experience, and a particular arrangement of memories and corresponding emotions?

I am asking this because, while there is currently no way to verify your hypothesis of "slight chemical/physical difference" accounting for individuality, one could make a convincing case from simple social observation that acummulated life experience accounts for it quite well.

Forget for a minute about the way Hugo Boss smells on you. Think about how Hugo Boss smells to you. Obviously, not everyone likes every fragrance, every kind of music, every potential mate, etc. Do you think chemical arrangements in your brain alone account for these types of individual aesthetic preferences too? How would you account for changes to such preferences?

 

[Runewolf1973]

What leads you to believe this? Since everyone's life experience is also different, why do you prefer to account for individuality by attributing it to a "particular chemical arrangement", rather than to particular life experience, and a particular arrangement of memories and corresponding emotions?

I am asking this because, while there is currently no way to verify your hypothesis of "slight chemical/physical difference" accounting for individuality, one could make a convincing case from simple social observation that acummulated life experience accounts for it quite well.

Forget for a minute about the way Hugo Boss smells on you. Think about how Hugo Boss smells to you. Obviously, not everyone likes every fragrance, every kind of music, every potential mate, etc. Do you think chemical arrangements in your brain alone account for these types of individual aesthetic preferences too? How would you account for changes to such preferences?

Of course a persons particular life experience plays a big role. Since no two people are identical, what happens to one person in life is going to affect that person differently chemically or physically than it would affect someone else. As we change and grow older, our chemical makeup also changes slightly and therefore our likes and dislikes change along with that. How would we remember those cumulative life experiences if they were not somehow chemically imprinted on our brains? If that delicate chemical arrangement is disrupted, we can also lose those memories.

BTW, what do you mean there is no way to currently verify this hypothesis? We already know for a fact that every person is slightly chemically different. That is why one person might be allergic to cats while another person is allergic to bees, while one person likes the taste of Scotch whisky and another person might think it tastes like envelope glue. It is all due to our particular chemical arrangements and how those chemical arrangements change over time.


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[Bunyip]

Link to some research which indicates how organisms become conscious - and not just how a brain develops, because that does not answer the question of how consciousness arises.

Why would I need to link anything? You can assume whatever you wish about what I know or do not know - I have no need to disprove baseless assumptions.

Science has learned a great deal about the emergence of consciousness

I have not criticised science AT ALL.

I am however criticising pseudo-scientific dilettantes for making the entirely false claim that science has explained consciousness.

If you know I'm wrong, link please.

Who made that claim? Are you assuming that I should defend somebody elses claim?

Back up your outrageous false claims or stop making them. If you really had respect for science, you would not so flagrantly misrepresent it.

What 'outrageous false claim'?

Again you take a very aggressive tone, but are attributing to me statements and claims that I have not made. Why not back up a little and check to see who made a comment you object to before taking somebody to task?

 

[John Doe]

Why would I need to link anything? You can assume whatever you wish about what I know or do not know - I have no need to disprove baseless assumptions.

Yes you do. You have claimed that you have some idea of how consciousness emerges. You don't. You say that 'science' has some idea of how consciousness 'emerges'. Wrong again.

That I have no idea how consciousness emerges is your assumption, it is not true though.

So you say ... but you have nothing to back it up. Please provide a scientific explanation, even a brief one, of how consciousness emerges.

Theism gives no information whatsoever about how consciousness arises, it can teach you nothing about that process. Conversely science has learned a great deal about it. The theory of evolution teaches us more about how complex and conscious organisms emerge than religions ever have.

I repeat, I am not a theist, nor am I claiming to have the knowledge which you claim to have.

You are criticizing science when it been far more instructive in this case than belief.

Show me where I criticised science.

What 'outrageous false claim'?

This one ...

Science has learned a great deal about the emergence of consciousness

Science has certainly made observations of the evolution of sense organs, but sense organs are not consciousness - unless you think cameras are conscious.

Again you take a very aggressive tone, but are attributing to me statements and claims that I have not made. Why not back up a little and check to see who made a comment you object to before taking somebody to task?

I am taking an aggressive tone ? You have been attacking my credibility and suggesting that I am an anti-scientific theist, and using inflammatory language such as ...

I must admit to finding your comment that atheists need to resort to emergence because there is no scientific evidence for how consciousness arises to be hilariously misguided. You have really got things backwards there I'm afraid.

You have just been corrected very thoughtfully, and with considerable restraint.

The best path for you at this point is to recognise and acknowledge what you don't know. And what 'science' doesn't know. It is all very well being an enlightened atheist and eschewing irrational faith , but do try to avoid replacing theism with 'scientism'. In other words, check your facts before you assume that the men in white lab coats understand everything. That is treating them like our ancestors treated priests ! :sarcastic

 

[Bunyip]

Yes you do. You have claimed that you have some idea of how consciousness emerges. You don't. You say that 'science' has some idea of how consciousness 'emerges'. Wrong again.

Science has learned a great deal about the emergence of consciousness, how am I wrong about that? It is a fact.

So you say ... but you have nothing to back it up. Please provide a scientific explanation, even a brief one, of how consciousness emerges.

Sure. Consciousness is an emrgent property of matter. It emerges as organisms become more complex - as they become complex enough to possess sensory organs an awareness of the input of those sensory organs is the beginning of consciousness.

Science has certainly made observations of the evolution of sense organs, but sense organs are not consciousness - unless you think cameras are conscious.

Well of course the sensory organ is not conscious - the brain that interprets the sensory information is.

I don't imagine that misattributing quotes to me is correcting me by the way:sarcastic

 

[Runewolf1973]

Yes you do. You have claimed that you have some idea of how consciousness emerges. You don't. You say that 'science' has some idea of how consciousness 'emerges'. Wrong again.



So you say ... but you have nothing to back it up. Please provide a scientific explanation, even a brief one, of how consciousness emerges.

Well, I don't know if science has figured it out yet, but I can tell you my theory...

The illusion of consciouness emerges when forms of matter (in the form of animate, lifelike creatures), given enough time and just the right conditions, grow in complexity. When simple interactions evolve into very complex interactions. The way I see it, from a very physical, materialistic standpoint, consciousness is the ability for creatures to act, react, and respond to external forces or stimuli. The more complex or evolved a particular creature becomes, the more conscious it may appear because it has evolved the ability to interact with its environment on a much more advanced level.

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[John Doe]

Science has learned a great deal about the emergence of consciousness, how am I wrong about that? It is a fact.

If that were true, you could back it up.

Sure. Consciousness is an emrgent property of matter. It emerges as organisms become more complex - as they become complex enough to possess sensory organs an awareness of the input of those sensory organs is the beginning of consciousness.

Pseudoscientific bafflegab. Only a vague hypothesis at best.

Well of course the sensory organ is not conscious - the brain that interprets the sensory information is.

A computer can interpret the input of a camera. Even a compact digital camera can recognise a smile. Conscious ? Probably not.

The brain, like the camera's computer chip in the analogy, exhibits complex behaviour. - but as the computer analogy illustrates, complex behaviour is not in itself consciousness.

So the challenge is - what is the difference between complex behaviour and consciousness ?

This is what you have not considered yet. The notion of consciousness as 'emergent behaviour' is merely a thought experiment, a vague notion. Emergent properties can be demonstrated in some systems, but the use of that term in relation to consciousness is at this stage science fiction, not science.

What I am trying to alert you to is that there is currently no science whatsoever which has made that leap.

If you wish to represent science honestly and correctly you need to grasp that point.

 

[Bunyip]

---[/quote]

If that were true, you could back it up.

Of course I can back it up - there is the Theory of evolution and several branches of science with thousands of research articles - animal behavior, neuro psychology, what exactly are you looking for?

Pseudoscientific bafflegab. Only a vague hypothesis at best.

Nooe, just an observation - consciousness emerges as organisms become more complex. A fish is conscious, so is a parrot - what is it that you find so elusive?

A computer can interpret the input of a camera. Even a compact digital camera can recognise a smile. Conscious ? Probably not.

So what? What point are you trying to make.

The brain, like the camera's computer chip in the analogy, exhibits complex behaviour. - but as the computer analogy illustrates, complex behaviour is not in itself consciousness.

Sure, but again - so what? I did not claim that complex behaviour was consciousness in itself. Yet again you are addressing claims that I have not made.

So the challenge is - what is the difference between complex behaviour and consciousness ?

Well the difference is pretty arbitrary, where one would draw that line would depend upon how you define the terms. I would think that there is no distinct division between the two - just a continuum.

This is what you have not considered yet. The notion of consciousness as 'emergent behaviour' is merely a thought experiment, a vague notion. Emergent properties can be demonstrated in some systems, but the use of that term in relation to consciousness is at this stage science fiction, not science.

I would argue that it is neither sci-fi nor a vague notion - but instead a simple observation.

What I am trying to alert you to is that there is currently no science whatsoever which has made that leap.

What leap?

 

[Runewolf1973]

Science has learned a great deal about the emergence of consciousness, how am I wrong about that? It is a fact.



Sure. Consciousness is an emrgent property of matter. It emerges as organisms become more complex - as they become complex enough to possess sensory organs an awareness of the input of those sensory organs is the beginning of consciousness.

Well of course the sensory organ is not conscious - the brain that interprets the sensory information is...

I agree with everything you have said, except I would go so far as to say that nothing about the brain is conscious. Is the brain highly complex and interactive? Absolutely.

Consciousness is simply a term (nothing more) used to describe our ability to feel, think, or be aware of our environment, but the definition of the word does nothing so far as to describe the actual physical processes which lead to this complex state of interaction. Because the definition of consciousness is so vague in that way, it leads many to speculate it has some non-physical or spiritual nature or cause. In another thread, I actually proposed a new definition for consciousness: the ability to act, react, and respond to external forces or stimuli. Not a big suprise that my new definition was not very well accepted, lol.

 

[Bunyip]

@John Doe

I don't see the emergence of consciousness as being particularly controversial or mysterious to science, you asked for references and I thought this article was a good starting point;

Toward a science of consciousness, Stuart R Hameroff

This article is more detailed and specific;

The emergence of human consciousness: from fetal to neonatal life, H Lagercrantz

 

[John Doe]

Of course I can back it up - there is the Theory of evolution and several branches of science with thousands of research articles - animal behavior, neuro psychology, what exactly are you looking for?

Any scientific explanation of consciousness, as opposed to complex behaviour.

Nooe, just an observation - consciousness emerges as organisms become more complex. A fish is conscious, so is a parrot - what is it that you find so elusive?


What leap?

What leap ...

You think science can explain this. I have done my best to let you know that science has no explanation of the leap from mere complexity (which is what evolution does address) to consciousness. You think your half-formed musings and science are the same thing. Not so.

A mechanism, whether biological or digital, which can (A) respond to stimuli is a totally different proposition to a mechanism which is (B) aware that it is responding.

Evolution accounts for (A), but not (B).

There is no science which accounts for (B). Fact of life. Get it through your head !

Generally when we discuss consciousness we mean the mix of (A) and (B).

(A) by itself is behaviour, not consciousness. That is what science describes.

As for (B) - awareness of that behaviour - no science yet.

That is my last remark on the subject of what science does and does not know about consciousness.

edit : just saw the articles you referenced. The first is hypothetical - speculations. Sure, there is discussion by cognitive scientists on the subject, but no definitive science which accounts for (B) awareness of behaviour. Haven't read the second. If it answers that question, post a quote. I won't hold my breath.

 

[Bunyip]

Any scientific explanation of consciousness, as opposed to complex behaviour.



What leap ...

Yes - what leap? There is a continuum, not a leap.

You think science can explain this

Sure, read the references.

. I have done my best to let you know that science has no explanation of the leap from mere complexity (which is what evolution does address) to consciousness. You think your half-formed musings and science are the same thing. Not so.

More than a century of peer reviewed scientific research is hardly 'no explanation'. And again, there is no 'leap' - just a continuum.

A mechanism, whether biological or digital, which can (A) respond to stimuli is a totally different proposition to a mechanism which is (B) aware that it is responding.

No, that is false. A mechanism could have both of those properties, they are not mutually exclusive.

Evolution accounts for (A), but not (B).

There is no science which accounts for (B). Fact of life. Get it through your head !

Sorry mate, but your ignorance of the relevant science is not the same thing as it not existing. Why not read the articles I cited?

Generally when we discuss consciousness we mean the mix of (A) and (B).

(A) by itself is behaviour, not consciousness. That is what science describes.

As for (B) - awareness of that behaviour - no science yet.

That is my last remark on the subject of what science does and does not know about consciousness.

Well that is a shame if it really is your last remark, given that it is so misguided. There is a great deal of science about (B), and I have given you references to it.

 

[John Doe]

Well, I don't know if science has figured it out yet, but I can tell you my theory...

The illusion of consciouness emerges when forms of matter (in the form of animate, lifelike creatures), given enough time and just the right conditions, grow in complexity. When simple interactions evolve into very complex interactions. The way I see it, from a very physical, materialistic standpoint, consciousness is the ability for creatures to act, react, and respond to external forces or stimuli. The more complex or evolved a particular creature becomes, the more conscious it may appear because it has evolved the ability to interact with its environment on a much more advanced level.

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I think I have already pointed out that complex behaviour does not necessarily involve awareness, so I won't repeat myself on that.

But I do have a comment about your suggestion that consciousness is an illusion.

Properly analysed, this is a circular proposition - it is self-referencing. The term 'illusion' is predicated on consciousness - an 'illusion' is necessarily a form of consciousness.

So when you say that 'consciousness is a kind of illusion', you are saying that 'consciousness is a kind of consciousness'.

Self-referencing loop.

 

[John Doe]

There is a great deal of science about (B), and I have given you references to it.

No you haven't. This is simply way over your head. No problem.

Why not read the articles I cited?

I doubt that you have read them. If you have, and they actually have scientific explanations of the emergence of consciousness, then why can't you provide a relevant quote ?

Answer - because that is not what they contain.

 

[Runewolf1973]

Any scientific explanation of consciousness, as opposed to complex behaviour.



What leap ...

You think science can explain this. I have done my best to let you know that science has no explanation of the leap from mere complexity (which is what evolution does address) to consciousness. You think your half-formed musings and science are the same thing. Not so.

A mechanism, whether biological or digital, which can (A) respond to stimuli is a totally different proposition to a mechanism which is (B) aware that it is responding.

Even the brain is a biological or physical mechanism which simply responds to stimuli, but does so at a very complex level.

 

[Bunyip]

No you haven't. This is simply way over your head. No problem.

I can safely assume that your insults are indicative of the fact that you have run out of rational responses.

There is no 'leap', there is a continuum. And so this great 'leap' you demand an explanation for does not exist to be explained.

 

[John Doe]

No you haven't. This is simply way over your head. No problem.

I doubt that you have read them. If you have, and they actually have scientific explanations of the emergence of consciousness, then why can't you provide a relevant quote ?

Answer - because that is not what they contain.

To clarify that, let's look at what these sources are -

The emergence of human consciousness: from fetal to neonatal life.
Lagercrantz H1, Changeux JP.
Author information
Abstract
A simple definition of consciousness is sensory awareness of the body, the self, and the world. The fetus may be aware of the body, for example by perceiving pain. It reacts to touch, smell, and sound, and shows facial expressions responding to external stimuli. However, these reactions are probably preprogrammed and have a subcortical nonconscious origin. Furthermore, the fetus is almost continuously asleep and unconscious partially due to endogenous sedation. Conversely, the newborn infant can be awake, exhibit sensory awareness, and process memorized mental representations. It is also able to differentiate between self and nonself touch, express emotions, and show signs of shared feelings. Yet, it is unreflective, present oriented, and makes little reference to concept of him/herself. Newborn infants display features characteristic of what may be referred to as basic consciousness and they still have to undergo considerable maturation to reach the level of adult consciousness. The preterm infant, ex utero, may open its eyes and establish minimal eye contact with its mother. It also shows avoidance reactions to harmful stimuli. However, the thalamocortical connections are not yet fully established, which is why it can only reach a minimal level of consciousness.

This is a behaviourist investigation of human development, NOT a theory of the nature and genesis of consciousness.



The other work is hypothetical. It is speculations from the world of cognitive science. Interesting, potentially valuable - but once again, not a scientific explanation of the nature of consciousness.This review makes that clear -

Toward a Science of Consciousness
Stuart R. Hameroff , Alfred W. Kaszniak and Alwyn C. Scott

"The exploration of consciousness is one of the most challenging problems of the human mind, where bold new concepts are required. This book provides the reader with exciting new ideas from a variety of scientific disciplines and thus serves as a highly useful basis for future research in this field."
-- Hermann P. J. Haken, Professor of Theoretical Physics and Synergetics, University of Stuttgart

Scientists and philosophers are focusing more intensely than ever on the nature of our human experience, resulting in a newly coalescing field of Consciousness Studies that has become a worldwide and highly interdisciplinary phenomenon.

When you understand the difference between developed scientific theory, and explorative speculation, get back to me