Embodied consciousness and Darwinian evolution: Can the two really be connected?

[wolfmanstout]

I've thought a lot about consciousness, and it seems to me that embodied consciousness (consciousness that is entirely represented in the brain/body) cannot be a product of Darwinian evolution.

 

 

I'll explain my reasoning:

 

First off, the theory that consciousness is embodied, by definition, means that there exists a physical representation for all conscious thought/sense/qualia. If this is in fact the case, then it would seem to me that consciousness must then be entirely redundant. In other words, there cannot be a "deferral" of unconscious brain processes to consciousness to solve some problem that is "too complex for unconscious physical processes" (as is often suggested), because any conscious process that solves the problem would, by our definition, have to have a physical basis (so clearly it was not too complex for physical processes). Thus, from a Darwinian perspective, embodied consciousness is entirely useless, as it simply mirrors what is already happening in the physical processes of the brain (and thus offers no selective advantage over purely unconscious creatures).

 

So, if what I have said is true, there seem to be two possible explanations for consciousness: if consciousness was in fact created by darwinian evolution, it CANNOT be (entirely) embodied in physical processes. On the other hand, if consciousness IS truly embodied, than it cannot have been created by darwinian evolution. I would argue that if the latter is the case, consciousness can probably be explained by some as-of-yet unknown form of (non-Darwinian) evolution. Another possible explanation would be that consciousness "just happens" to pop up when you have things arranged in the brain the way humans do, even though it offers no advantage. Of course, I'm sure some people would be inclined to jump to the conclusion that some divine creator had to instill consciousness, but I won't even get into that ....

 

So, does my thinking make sense to anyone else? If not, please try to be very clear about which parts of my reasoning you disagree with (because I really do want to get to the heart of this problem). Thank you all very much for your help!

[EL]

So, does my thinking make sense to anyone else? If not, please try to be very clear about which parts of my reasoning you disagree with (because I really do want to get to the heart of this problem). Thank you all very much for your help!

No, I am sorry that your logical induction was non sequitor at all, because it was founded on statements that may not be agreed with to reach the conclusions you claim to stem from your premises.

First of all, you seem to believe that consciousness is one of two binary states, which is a critical but common error.

Secondly, do you have the direct experience of a palm tree to be absolutely certain that it has no consciousness of any sort at all?

The Darwinian evolution is certainly the true model behind our evolution and reaching the top of the known food chain along with other predator-species.

Thirdly, before you try to analyse the one consciousness of an individual human to relate it to neural cells embodying them, why not ask about the extra / supra individual consciousness and how does it happen?

Huge industrial organisations that are in competition, do have boards of directors effecting a brain for each to take the decisions of what to be done as a reaction to feedback from the market and the availability of resources and materials. Such boards of directors can be sleepy, sloppy, active, awake and communicating, etcetera. from such a perspective, each member contributes by ideas, learns from others and modifies the ideas and share them again with others until a majority agreement is reached to dictate the decisions taken to control and move the industrial production power.

This is identical to what happens inside a single brain by understanding that its consciousness is a function founded on the communication of the available senses, motor centres and data manipulators such as memory, etcetera.

Blind people sleep and awake; the deaf too have consciousness; the paralyzed that did not enter a comatose state follow the same pattern with what they have still functioning and interacting internally and externally to information.

In lower animals, they have perfect reflexes as an evolutionary level of consciousness; emotions too began functioning before intellect did.

Plants must have there own way of sensing a state of being and an even lesser than reflexes way to respond to environmental information.

This means that consciousness as we know it has definitely evolved and was crowned by the cortical layer of higher mammals.

We do not need to die to be certain the consciousness is embedded in the brain and dependant on it neuro-chemical functionality because we do know exactly how to temporarily switch off consciousness by using anaesthetics. We can use NMR to scan the brain and determine which part corresponds to which type of activity.

Oxygen and glucose are the chemical precursors of energy liberated by the citric acid cycle, and that energy is critical to maintain the health of the brain all the time regardless of the state of consciousness.

Being subconsciously aware of being aware is a mental qualia that we register as a state of consciousness.

We are not unique with this quality among the mammals but we exceed them by the ability of greater communication because of the development of linguistics and abstractions of sets of information.

Such differences are "for" rather than "against" relating consciousness to the Darwinian evolution model.

[Sayonara]

By "Darwinian evolution", are you talking about the process of natural selection, or something you just made up and haven't defined in your post?

[wolfmanstout]

Thank you very much for your intelligent reply. You do, however, assume that I am unaware of several pieces of evidence when in fact I was quite aware of each of the examples you gave. In fact, therein lies the reason that I posted in the first place. There is much evidence to support the idea that consciousness is shaped by evolution just like any other attribute of a living creature. However, what seems strange to me, and what I will try to clarify, is my notion that an embodied consciousness would not arise from Darwinian evolution, by the very definitions of these concepts. In other words, my claim is that consciousness itself (if and only if it agrees with the theory of embodied mind) offers no selective advantage to the creatures that possess it.

 

Perhaps the most confusion arises from my nonchalant use of the "embodied mind" theory. This concept is most often associated with cognitive scientist George Lakoff. Thus, I will present some of Lakoff's words on the theory, taken from Philosophy in the Flesh: "Any reasoning you do using a concept rquires that the neural structures of the brain carry out that reasoning. Accordingly, the architecture of your brain's neural networks determines what concepts you have and hence the kind of reasoning you can do." Though this quote mentions reasoning in particular, the theory applies to all qualia. The idea is that all conscious experience must have a physical "backbone" in the brain or body. According to the theory, there can be no conscious experience which does not directly arise from some neural correlate of consciousness (NCC). The theory also has implications on what kinds of information the mind can handle, but I won't get into that.

 

What I am arguing is that if this is so, if all conscious activity is mirrored by physical activity in the brain or body, then consciousness itself offers nothing to a creature. The creature could very well be a philosophical "zombie," retaining all the complex physical structures in the brain that give rise to the creature's complex action, but having no consciousness arising from those structures. Now, you may say that this is impossible. Perhaps it is. Perhaps the physical structures that make up conscious creatures naturally give rise to consciousness, thus making such a zombie impossible. Nevertheless, even in such a case, that consciousness would still not have actually been created by Darwinian evolution, it would have naturally arisen, by our very definition. Such a consciousness could be molded by Darwinian evolution, because the underlying neurons which it reflects are shaped by evolution. Nevertheless, the consciousness itself would have spontaneously arisen, it would not have been arisen through Darwinian evolution as an aid to the creature. Let me expound on this some more:

 

Like you say, a tree may have consciousness. I agree entirely, but that still does not answer the question of why it has consciousness from a Darwinian standpoint. In fact, your example of the tree illustrates my point very well: A tree may or may not have consciousness, and the answer to this question is irrelevant to the tree's success in the process of natural selection. If scientists were to somehow conclusively discover that trees are in fact conscious creatures (or for that matter are not conscious creatures), it would in no way change our understanding of their evolution.

 

The flaw in your reasoning is that you equate complex behavior with consciousness, as if one cannot happen without the other. At the very least, we see that this is not the case in the human unconscious. Unconscious human processes do not produce any conscious experience, yet they can do quite a bit. My question is: what can conscious brain activity do that unconscious brain activity cannot? Often people claim that conscious brain activity can handle more a complex situation more efficiently than unconscious activity. This seems to me, however, to violate the basic principle of the embodied mind theory. If the conscious brain can do any one thing better than unconscious physical activity, then consciousness must be more than simply a parallel representation of existing physical activity. If this is the case, fine, but that would mean we should abolish the embodied mind theory and no longer expect to have a full physical representation for all conscious activity. If we wish to stick with the embodied mind theory, we must accept that having consciousness present is nothing more than a parallel representation of physical activity and thus is irrelevant to the progress of evolution. If we take the latter view, we still can't rest easily yet. If consciousness arises naturally from complex arrays of neurons and has no effect on an animals survival, why then does consciousness exist at all? Or perhaps I'm missing something...

 

No' date=' I am sorry that your logical induction was non sequitor at all, because it was founded on statements that may not be agreed with to reach the conclusions you claim to stem from your premises.

First of all, you seem to believe that consciousness is one of two binary states, which is a critical but common error.

Secondly, do you have the direct experience of a palm tree to be absolutely certain that it has no consciousness of any sort at all?

The Darwinian evolution is certainly the true model behind our evolution and reaching the top of the known food chain along with other predator-species.

Thirdly, before you try to analyse the one consciousness of an individual human to relate it to neural cells embodying them, why not ask about the extra / supra individual consciousness and how does it happen?

Huge industrial organisations that are in competition, do have boards of directors effecting a brain for each to take the decisions of what to be done as a reaction to feedback from the market and the availability of resources and materials. Such boards of directors can be sleepy, sloppy, active, awake and communicating, etcetera. from such a perspective, each member contributes by ideas, learns from others and modifies the ideas and share them again with others until a majority agreement is reached to dictate the decisions taken to control and move the industrial production power.

This is identical to what happens inside a single brain by understanding that its consciousness is a function founded on the communication of the available senses, motor centres and data manipulators such as memory, etcetera.

Blind people sleep and awake; the deaf too have consciousness; the paralyzed that did not enter a comatose state follow the same pattern with what they have still functioning and interacting internally and externally to information.

In lower animals, they have perfect reflexes as an evolutionary level of consciousness; emotions too began functioning before intellect did.

Plants must have there own way of sensing a state of being and an even lesser than reflexes way to respond to environmental information.

This means that consciousness as we know it has definitely evolved and was crowned by the cortical layer of higher mammals.

We do not need to die to be certain the consciousness is embedded in the brain and dependant on it neuro-chemical functionality because we do know exactly how to temporarily switch off consciousness by using anaesthetics. We can use NMR to scan the brain and determine which part corresponds to which type of activity.

Oxygen and glucose are the chemical precursors of energy liberated by the citric acid cycle, and that energy is critical to maintain the health of the brain all the time regardless of the state of consciousness.

Being subconsciously aware of being aware is a mental qualia that we register as a state of consciousness.

We are not unique with this quality among the mammals but we exceed them by the ability of greater communication because of the development of linguistics and abstractions of sets of information.

Such differences are "for" rather than "against" relating consciousness to the Darwinian evolution model.[/quote']

[Mokele]

The simple problem is that there is *no* definition for consciousness that is even remotely useful or testable. Without even the basic definition of a concept which, frankly, I suspect is more a side-effect of a complex brain than an actual trait, there is no way to say diddly-squat about its evolution or lack thereof.

 

Frankly, this whole thread sounds more like philosophy than science, with science mixed in. And the two don't mix well; most philosophers get things very badly wrong. A friend of mine, the head of the philosophy deptartment here, is famous for pissing in everyone's philosophical corn flakes because he has a strong background in neurobiology, and can thus blow their philosophies out of the water when they start talking about the mind.

 

Mokele

[EL]

What I am arguing is that if this is so' date=' if all conscious activity is mirrored by physical activity in the brain or body, then consciousness itself offers nothing to a creature. The creature could very well be a philosophical "zombie," retaining all the complex physical structures in the brain that give rise to the creature's complex action, but having no consciousness arising from those structures.

<snip>

Or perhaps I'm missing something...[/quote']

*

Yes, I have now a greater certainty to understand your point of view.

On this forum we are intimidated by the tyrants to restrict what we say to biology and evolution, so let us do so.

Naturally, a philosopher with strong background in neurobiology will inevitably piss in everyone's philosophical corn flakes, because it is his natural complex reaction when pissed off by non philosophical Ph. D. holders who are supposed to be partly philosophers of their disciplines.

*

I quoted your wording "zombie", because it is most relevant here as a representation of what you say.

The fiction of a zombie pictures mindless creatures with bizarre method of walking similar to cripple robots, so let us expel that picture from our minds and come back to the science of biological reflexes and its placement regarding an evolving more complex electro-biochemical reaction, and its functionality in the context of survival and selectivity as in the Darwinian evolution model.

*

I am in favour of the "Embodied Mind" theory and endorse it. And this means that I give this as my premises from which I have to clear the ambiguity or apparent contradiction with the evolutionary concepts.

You asked if you were missing something, and I think that you do, and that it is related to the awareness of the effect rather than the cause that causes the effect. If we were zombies, we would be perfect machines that can analyse the environmental data, which we are being informed of, through our senses in contrast to our memorised experiences. This is not true of course as we can evidently realise. The way we neurologically function is through approximation and feedback methods for a corrective mechanism built in evolutionary, to improve our responses as long as we live.

*

You cannot play Billiard's Pool while being unconscious.

This means that the "Embodied Mind" is an inherent ability or functionality awaiting the power-supply and the data, just like a variable speed motor switched off. When the switch is on, it can rotate in one of two directions with different angular velocities and accelerations and torques depending on sensors feeding control circuitry.

*

It is extremely complex, but take for example the case in which a cave man holding a spear is confronted by a group of hyena, say four of them; if there was a tree near by, which he is aware of, he might have the choice of running to it and climbing it. If there was a rock, which he is aware of, he might have the choice of giving it his back and fending for himself using the spear and killing the predators one at a time. Of course he might also panic and flee. The hyena have similar choices to escape or continue to attack as a pack. If our cave man was consciously trained to use his spear professionally and daringly, his chances of survival must be much greater than if his neural network was not wired to respond with fast reflexes and equally informed through the cortex to select the nearest enemy or the most threatening hyena, which is also the closest to his spear and is the best candidate for a kill thrust.

*

The training sessions are different from the life-threatening incident. The percentage of "zombie" reflexes increases dramatically during the fight, while the percentage of selective and intellectual moves dominate the training session.

*

Hidden in that extreme complexity of skill-acquirement is the biological limits of muscular performance founded on the accumulation of feeding and training chances to build that system, which is not that obvious at once during the battle as a response to the information of a threat. Nevertheless, it is also too obvious that consciousness as a function has improved the chances of human survival.

*

Notice that that individual had the body and the skill, and consequently has better chances of mating and having a child whom he can pass his skills much earlier to.

*

Now we have two parallel evolutionary traits, one being a muscular and the bound neurological ability, and one being knowledge and skill that educates our reflexes. Survival probability then is not just the ability to learn the knowledge and the skill, but the effectively learned knowledge and skill to survive.

*

We differ from other species in our degree of communication and skilful behaviour. This entails a thought process we call consciousness. Thus the evolution of the brain tissue was directly proportional to the selective application and outcome of causes and effects, as we inherited the ability that was emphasised by using that ability to acquire parental or social skills.

*

This means that the mind is certainly embodied in the neurons of the body and brain (per individual), but the evolutionary traits are biologically inherited as an ability and not as a skill; however without the ability to acquire the skill we would not have skills to acquire; but we do, and that is why our chances of survival increased in favour of those who had the biological ability to learn skills.

*

That is why we are not "Zombies", but we do embody the neural tissues required for learning skills, which are not external to the body or a divine gift; consciousness then, is the effect and not the cause of anything inheritable, while it is the cause of the better survival of the inheritable that acquires the effect.

*

 

You might find these books from my library to be a good reading:

 

1- Evolving Brains : (by) John Allman.

 

2- Left brain Right brain : (by) Sally P. Springer and George Deutsch.

 

3- A vision of the brain : (by) Semir Zeki.

 

4- Consciousness : (by) J. Allan Hobson.

 

5- Biological Psychology : (by) Rosenzweig, Leiman and Breedlove.

 

6- The naked ape : (by) Desmond Morris.

[wolfmanstout]

You misunderstood my use of the term zombie. I should also let you know that despite your belief that the use of such a term is silly, it is in fact referred to in the beginning of Chapter 12 of The Quest for Consciousness, a book written by Dr. Christof Koch, perhaps the leading neuroscientist in the search for the physical basis of consciousness. He was also a former partner of Frances Crick after Crick discovered the double helical structure of DNA. I will quote him to explain the term zombie (as I use it): "Zombies could be living among us. Or so claim some philosophers. These fictitious creatures are devoid of any subjective feelings, yet are endowed with behaviors identical to their normal, conscious counterparts. It does not feel like anything to be a zombie." (pg. 205, Christof Koch, The Quest for Consciousness). Let's not let an interesting scientific discussion deteriorate into ad hominem attacks about the use of the term zombie.

 

I never said that humans or any creatures are actually zombies, I was only using that as a theoretical example to ask the question: if ALL conscious activity is explicitly represented in the brain/body (my understanding of embodied mind theory), then what does consciousness have to offer to a creature that is not already happening in the creature's biochemistry? Perhaps most of our disagreement results from two different views of the embodied mind theory. If your understanding of embodied mind theory allows for a certain amount of conscious action that is not fully and explicitly represented in the brain/body, well then I would say we are on the same page. If you agree with my understanding of the theory (which requires complete explicit representation of all conscious activity), then read on and I'll try to put my argument more succintly.

 

If we accept that evolution brought about consciousness, we accept that consciousness had something to offer. For simplicity, we can say that consciousness allowed the creature to be more efficient. A contradiction arises, however, when one brings in the idea that ALL of the mind is explicitly represented by the physical reactions of the brain/body (embodied mind theory). If such is the case, then any "more-efficient conscious decision/reaction" must also be explicitly represented in the physics of the brain/body. If this is so, then clearly the consciousness is *not* more efficient than biochemistry, as the biochemistry still has to do all the work! In other words, if we stick to the embodied mind theory, then any conscious operation must still be represented by physical reactions in the brain/body, so nothing is gained by the consciousness itself (even if there is much gained by the complex behavior that tends to accompany it in nature). And if this is so, why did the consciousness arise?

 

I do entirely understand where you are coming from when you point out all the examples of conscious activity proving useful in so many situations. I am not trying to deny any of your examples in any way. The question that I am trying to raise is why conscious activity is actually needed in the places that it is used. If we view conscious action as being superior in some ways to unconscious physical reactions, then all makes sense. However, such a statement seems to me to violate embodied mind theory. If these "superior conscious actions" are fully represented in the biochemistry of the creature (as required by embodied mind theory), then the conciousness itself is unnecessary and redundant. It is important not to assume that consciousness is necessary for complex behavior, because embodied mind theory requires that the biochemistry has to do the all the work whether the consciousness is working alongside it or not.

 

I would have to agree with Mokele's post that consciousness is a very weird topic to deal with in science due to its inherently elusive behavior. Nevertheless, I think we can still try to do the best we can. Remember, Descartes showed that all he could really say for sure was, "I think, therefore I am." Anything beyond that is, to some degree, speculation. Still, we do the best we can because in the end we usually end up with information that makes us better off than we were originally, or "progressively less wrong" as some say.

[mmalluck]

I agree that the term conscious is too poorly defined.

 

I'm gonna see if I can poke some holes in your argument with a few questions.

 

Is a new born baby conscious?

What about the metally impared?

How about labotomized individuals?

How about animals that demonstrate some forms of consciouness like such as Koko the gorilla?

 

I would say the newborn baby is not yet conscious, but has the ability to become so.

The mentally disabled person has some limited form of consciousness, but will not operate on the same level as others.

The labotomized individual lost the ability to be conscious in many respects.

You could say that everything the gorillia does is learned, but couldn't you also argue that all consciousness has to be learned?

 

It all depends on what an individual has the ability to learn and what the individual does learn. Learned behavor is not evolutionary, but the ability to learn a behavor is.

 

In this same sence I could argue that any abstract concept could not arise from evoltion, just as you have. Abstract concepts are learned into existance, not evolved.

[elfstone]

I don't see why consciousness cannot be the product of darwinian evolution. Even if we accept that consciousness offers nothing to the survival of a species, it would have to be a hindrance somehow for it to be ruled out by evolution. I don't think there's any evidence that consciousness lessens the chances of survival, quite the contrary.

As for "why" it came to be when it seems that everything about consciousness has a physical counterpart, my opinion is that we are quick to separate it from its physical counterparts. When a brain of a certain complexity evolves, then consciousness emerges. This has no direct link with evolution, it is just what happens. As a molecule of a certain complexity becomes "alive" and replicates, the same higher state is achieved by the complexity of a brain.

[wolfmanstout]

To elfstone:

 

When a brain of a certain complexity evolves, then consciousness emerges. This has no direct link with evolution, it is just what happens. As a molecule of a certain complexity becomes "alive" and replicates, the same higher state is achieved by the complexity of a brain.

 

I would agree that that explanation works just fine. In my first post I point out that very idea: "another possible explanation would be that consciousness 'just happens' to pop up when you have things arranged in the brain the way humans do, even though it offers no advantage." Entirely reasonable, one might even say the most likely given the data. But you don't find anything at all strange about that? I'm not saying that it isn't true, but it certainly seems like something we ought to look into a bit more.

 

To mmalluck: I don't really see how those questions relate to my argument. Maybe you have a different definition consciousness; that could easily lead to confusion. By consciousness I am not referring to self-consciousness, I am referring to all the feelings involved with awareness (which in humans includes self-consciousness). I think a lot of people's confusion with my posts in this thread has to do with the preconceived ideas about consciousness, mind, etc. that they have before reading the post. Several of the ideas in my post (zombies, anyone), admittedly, are theoretical. As a result, someone going reading it and thinking up real world examples that refute entirely theoretical situations that I bring up will obviously never get my point. Now, before I get attacked by someone saying "science is about the real world, not theoretical situations" let me point out that all the theoretical situations I bring up are just to better illustrate my point; they aren't necessary to my argument.

 

This thread is obviously about questioning well accepted ideas. As such, my argument is naturally not going to be something you can expect to speedread and pick up all the ideas from instantly. All I ask is that people read what I say carefully and follow my deductive logic, then you can debate all you want.

[atinymonkey]

As such, my argument is naturally not going to be something you can expect to speedread and pick up all the ideas from instantly. All I ask is that people read what I say carefully and follow my deductive logic, then you can debate all you want.

Sure it is. Consciousness exists in humans. Humans exist through evolution. The only method open for the development of consciousness is evolution. What you have presented is convoluted supposition, and the whole concept needs a decent shave with occam's razor.

[Halucigenia]

I think that this topic needs a qualifying statement at the top of each poster's first post, as to what they think that consciousness is and what the embodied mind/consciousness/cognition theory means to them. Otherwise you are just going round in circles.

 

So here goes:-

I think that consciousness is simply the ability to sense and react to an organism's surroundings, the more complex the organism the more complex these decisions can be, including decisions based on learning. By my definition all organisms are conscious, just to differing degrees.

 

I think that embodied mind means that there is no form of supernatural consciousness, consciousness is just a construct of the mind, which is resident in the body.

 

One of my main concerns with these kind of discussions is that most people fail to realize that the mind is part of the body. My understanding is that the body controls itself through the mind using it's brain (this is why I think that my sig is so funny).

To me there is no mind/body split and therefore no unconscious/conscious split. Unconscious thought just rolls along into conscious thought. I see it as a continuum of consciousness, both within an organism and between organisms, if you like.

 

 

Though I entirely agree with atinymonkey's post, I am still trying to get to the bottom of wolfmanstout's question.

there cannot be a "deferral" of unconscious brain processes to consciousness to solve some problem that is "too complex for unconscious physical processes" (as is often suggested), because any conscious process that solves the problem would, by our definition, have to have a physical basis (so clearly it was not too complex for physical processes).

Who suggests that any thought processes, conscious or unconscious, do not have a physical basis? Everything has a physical basis. Your reasoning evokes the supernatural, there is no such thing as the supernatural, if there was, it could be explained, therefore it would not be supernatural!

The phrase "too complex for physical processes" smacks of "Irreducible Complexity", you are not a creationist by any chance are you?

So, if what I have said is true, there seem to be two possible explanations for consciousness: if consciousness was in fact created by darwinian evolution, it CANNOT be (entirely) embodied in physical processes. On the other hand, if consciousness IS truly embodied, than it cannot have been created by darwinian evolution.

this statement just seems totaly the wrong way around to me. I cannot see how, unless consciousness is embodied, it could possibly be propagated by Darwinian evolution, any other explanation seems to me to be Lamarkian, especially if consciousness is learned!

 

 

As syonara says

By "Darwinian evolution", are you talking about the process of natural selection, or something you just made up and haven't defined in your post?

Wolfmanstout, statements like

Nevertheless, even in such a case, that consciousness would still not have actually been created by Darwinian evolution, it would have naturally arisen, by our very definition.

and

If consciousness arises naturally from complex arrays of neurons and has no effect on an animals survival' date=' why then does consciousness exist at all?[/quote']show that you are missing something - a lack of understanding of Darwinian evolution - what is it, if it is not "natural" and how does consciousness have no effect on an animal's survival?

[wolfmanstout]

Halucigenia: you agree with me. Your confusion arises because you take it as a natural property of complex systems like ours (and other animals) to produce consciousness. As a result, with such a belief, the idea of separating consciousness from the complex processes that underly it does not make much sense. Your ideas would fall into the category that I mentioned in my first post, "Another possible explanation would be that consciousness 'just happens' to pop up when you have things arranged in the brain the way humans do, even though it offers no advantage."

 

Offers no advantage???

 

I know it frustrates people to make a distinction between consciousness and the underlying neural structure, but you *have* to do this, unless you want to deny the existence of consciousness. Making that distinction, the emergent consciousness itself offers no advantage in evolution. The underlying neurons do, but the fact that those neurons are projected as conscious activity does not.

 

If this view of consciousness sounds "supernatural" to anyone, then they should read up on the discussion of the mind/body problem that has been going on for hundreds of years. One of the first things that was realized was that consciousness itself is NOT physical. It is fundamentally different than physical matter for a number of reasons. The only opposition to this claim that is taken seriously is a complete denial of qualia; or perhaps a claim that it is an illusion (another form of denial).

 

If you believe in free will, I could certainly see how that might cause confusion. Realize though, a belief in free will is a contradiction with the idea that all consciousness has basis in a deterministic system (and the physical world is a deterministic system, unless you argue that consciousness lies in quantum mechanics). With free will out of the situation, it becomes quite a bit more clear that having a consciousness around is not going to "control" any of the neurons in the brain; it isn't going to offer any "veto power"; it will just be slave to the matter from which it arises. And if it is slave to the matter from which it arises, then it is not going to actually offer anything to the system itself. Do you still think I'm a creationist?

 

Heres an analogy. It's far from a great analogy, but it should get across a few of my points: youve got two films running. One film that is projected onto a screen, the other shoots out into space and, for our purposes, is unable to project onto anything. In every other way, the film and the projector are identical. The projection itself represents consciousness. The reel and all the components running the film are the brain/body. Just like with a brain, the projection is an emergent property of the projector and reel. Now, if a physical process comes along to affect these two machines, does it change anything at all that one has a show going on and the other does not? No, because the physical processes are identical in each. Likewise, would evolution (a physical process) favor a conscious brain over an unconscious brain that is otherwise entirely the same? Would it change anything that consciousness emerges from one of the brains and not the other? No, because the fact that we all have consciousness thanks to an emergent property of the brain/body has no effect on the brain/body itself. And if you don't like that analogy, completely disregard it.

 

If anyone thinks that consciousness is anything other than a slave to the neurons which provide for it, then they should make that clear, as that is a violation of one of my basic premises, that all conscious activity is explicitly represented in the brain. If you want to argue that consciousness can somehow affect the physical systems of the mind and body, then either you are treating consciousness like something physical (which it is not) or you are violating my premise that consciousness is not an "outside force" but is instead entirely represented in the brain, a superfluous effect of the neural activity of the brain.

 

Also, I should mention something before people say my argument only works from a dualistic standpoint. Even if you are a monist and believe that consciousness and physical matter are two aspects of the same thing, you still are dealing with TWO aspects and thus can talk about the two aspects seperately. Furthermore, a monist belief still does not explain why the conscious aspect is there, and certainly doesn't claim that evolution brought it about. It views consciousness as an emergent property of brain matter and says that to ask "why" it happens is a silly question, like asking why energy exists. And again, I have no problem with this view, so if you have it don't think that you disagree with me. The people I am arguing with are those who say that conscoiusness does emerge for a reason (evolution) but claim at the same time that consciousness is explicitly expressed in the biochemistry of the brain. Why, if we already have the biochemistry doing all the work on its own, would consciousness be advantageous in such a situation? I'm not saying it would be disadvantageous, but simply that it wouldnt bring anything at all.

[mmalluck]

How can consciousness be physically defined in flesh and bone, but yet not be something physical? Is the blueprint that represents a structure any less physical than the structure itself?

 

I'll agree with you in that I believe that consciousness is bound by the flesh and bone of the body. All that is consciousness can be found in the forms of neural paths and chemical interactions in the brain, but where we disagree deals with your view of free will. I beileve that free will can still exist if you consider that the consciousness and the underlying physical structures operate through that of a feedback system; The consciousness of an individual can extert a force over the neural network of the brain, just as this neural network can influence the consciousness. The system is imperfect do to the quantum nature of the universe we live in, nothing is perfectly deterministic. I realize this is violating two of your premises, but how would account for my following two examples in your terms?

 

Take meditation into consideration. Through focused concentration, the very pattern of the electrical signals through the brain can be influneced and controlled. Here I would say that the conscious mind is exerting control over the physical structure of the brain. Can you account for this in any other manner?

 

Now consider dreams. Here we have loosely regulated firing of neurons within the brain that inturn trigger images and often farcial stories to appear. Here the neural fabric that composes the conscious mind is directly interacting and exerting some form of control over the conscious. Again, how do you account for this?

[wolfmanstout]

Nice post mmalluck...I finally feel like we are making some progress . Ok, to answer your questions.

 

How can consciousness be physically defined in flesh and bone, but yet not be something physical? Is the blueprint that represents a structure any less physical than the structure itself?

 

Ok, the view you have is materialism, which basically says that the only thing this universe is made up of is materials. There are two ways that materialism is typically dealt with. Either one denies the existence of mental states altogether, or one claims that mental states and physical states are two properties of the same material. Since you don't seem to believe in the first one, I'll assume the second one. Now, even with this belief, one still has to admit that the conscious aspect of matter is clearly different than the physical aspect of matter. After all, there are plenty of properties that can describe mental states that simply do not make sense when describing physical states (and vice versa). A quick analogy: science has shown that light acts as both a particle and a wave. Nevertheless, that doesn't lead scientists to claim that particles ARE waves (or vice versa). So even materialists don't claim that there is no difference between the mental and physical aspects of brain matter (unless, of course, they completely deny the existence of one or the other, which you don't do).

 

I'll agree with you in that I believe that consciousness is bound by the flesh and bone of the body. All that is consciousness can be found in the forms of neural paths and chemical interactions in the brain, but where we disagree deals with your view of free will. I beileve that free will can still exist if you consider that the consciousness and the underlying physical structures operate through that of a feedback system; The consciousness of an individual can extert a force over the neural network of the brain, just as this neural network can influence the consciousness. The system is imperfect do to the quantum nature of the universe we live in, nothing is perfectly deterministic. I realize this is violating two of your premises, but how would account for my following two examples in your terms?

 

Before I continue, I just want to elaborate a bit on the "quantum brain" theory. First off, the evidence for this is a bit sketchy. Most studies on brain activity show that it happens on a large enough scale that quantum mechanics probably do not play a huge role. Nevertheless, I will readily admit that this evidence is lacking. After all, quantum entanglement could play a larger role than we think and we would have no idea from the data we have so far. Also, one of the main things that I think makes people gravitate towards the quantum theory of the brain is the fact that they don't want to give up the idea of free will. I'll try to explain right now my view on why free will is unnecessary in my model of the mind (despite the fact that, on first look, free will seems quite necesssary).

 

Basically, the easiest way to get rid of free will is to say that any feeling of free will is really a feeling of your brain struggling to make a decision. So when someone says choose heads or tails, it obviously seems like you can easily choose either one (and thus have free will). However, let's start from the assumption that this is not the case. Instead, I argue that when you feel that sense of free will and choice over that coin flip, you are actually feeling a conscious portion of your deterministic brain working through the two options. The fact that you feel so free to choose either one is just a result of the fact that your brain has no reason to favor either decision, so the neural structures advocating your brain to decide on each side of the coin toss are of relatively equal strength. Thus, the two neural structures struggle, eventually one option surfaces, and you make the call. You experience this neural struggle as a conscious free-willed struggle. Nowhere in that quick explanation did I need to invoke the theory of free will to explain the actions of the coin toss. As far as I know, this theory of mine leaves no holes and is more favorable in light of occam's razor as it does not advocate throwing in more complicated things like free will and nondeterministic physics such as quantum mechanics. So now I'll answer the next two questions of yours from this viewpoint.

 

Take meditation into consideration. Through focused concentration, the very pattern of the electrical signals through the brain can be influneced and controlled. Here I would say that the conscious mind is exerting control over the physical structure of the brain. Can you account for this in any other manner?

 

I would argue that in such a situation, the conscious mind is not actually controlling the physical structure of the brain in the way that it appears to be. Rather, what is happening is conscious neural structures are acting like any other deterministic physical structure to overtake other unconscious neural structures and redirecting their actions, thus changing the electrical signals of the brain. Because the dominant neural nets happen to be the ones producing consciousness in this case, a feeling of control over your brain arises.

 

Now consider dreams. Here we have loosely regulated firing of neurons within the brain that inturn trigger images and often farcial stories to appear. Here the neural fabric that composes the conscious mind is directly interacting and exerting some form of control over the conscious. Again, how do you account for this?

 

Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but this one seems to fit my argument especially well. You have neurons in the brain doing weird firing, other neurons making sense of the story, and finally those neurons influence conscious neurons which produces the dream. Just for fun, I'll take on the unusual phenomenon of lucid dreaming; that is when one is aware that one is dreaming. In this case, the dream begins as usual, as described above. Eventually, however, certain neural nets, neural nets which have encoded a concept of what everyday life is normally like, begin receiving messages from parts of the brain which show unusual activity not associated with everday life (eg. people with four eyes etc). As a result, the nets start firing wildly to alert the brain of the discovery. This firing eventually makes its way into the parts of the brain responsible for consciousness, and this whole bizarre scenario is finally experienced by the person as "realizing they are actually dreaming." In their mind, this probably felt like some powerful act of free will, overcoming the illusion of dreaming. In reality, however, it is just deterministic neural nets firing like in any other situation.

[Sayonara]

By "Darwinian evolution", are you talking about the process of natural selection, or something you just made up and haven't defined in your post?

I don't really like having to repeat myself but it seems to be necessary.

[wolfmanstout]

I don't really like having to repeat myself but it seems to be necessary.

 

I didn't answer because I thought it was apparent from the following posts...but the answer is natural selection, Darwinian evolution as everyone knows it.

[wolfmanstout]

Just to save people some time, I should say that I don't really see this thread going anywhere...so If you have a bunch of major disagreements with my post, I would advise you to save your time and move to another thread. That said, perhaps the discussion about free will in the brain that has started in the past couple of posts has promise. I'm much more likely to stay involved if the discussion moves in that direction. Not trying to be a jerk, just being honest.