Consciousness

[joigus]

On 8/6/2021 at 7:17 PM, Lan Todak said:

If microscopic variables give rise to conscious mind, can we get A.I abilities to adapt to ransom environment as how conscious mind works?

I'm not sure that state-of-the-art AI manages to replicate the adaptiveness of nervous tissue. I'm no expert on AI, but for AI to replicate that --adapting to slowly varying random environments-- it would have to be able to decide what abilities are worth developing. Maybe it's got to that point and I just don't know. 

[Gees]

On 7/16/2021 at 8:16 AM, joigus said:

🤣

I can only quote Christof Koch at this point:

Consciousness is fundamentally about being, not about doing.

Yes. It might help to remember that consciousness is not about doing anything including thinking. Consciousness is about being and feeling; thinking is an extra. Trees don't think, but they are conscious.

Gee

On 7/16/2021 at 10:48 AM, Peterkin said:

The spiritual basis or bias thing was Beecee responding - directly, I think - to the OP, and conflating consciousness with conscience. I thought that was a very interesting idea. 

A lot of people confuse consciousness with conscience -- especially in the science forums because science insists that the brain and consciousness are the same thing. They are not. Flowers will turn their faces to the sun because they are aware (conscious) of the sun. Flowers do not have brains, so flowers have no rational aspect of mind, so they have no judgement regarding good and bad, so they have no conscience.

Alive = some degree of awareness, consciousness

Brain = rational aspect of mind and maybe conscience

If you are going to try to understand these threads, you should know that spiritual means emotion/feeling. To get into the "spirit" of things is to get into the mood. A spirited horse is one with a lot of feeling. Although few people seem to understand this, religions actually study emotion and they name the entity that leads the emotion, "God". So you in fact are spiritual, cause you are not a psychopath.

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As for grading consciousness, I'm all for it. That is to say, I'm sure it comes in degrees as well as flavours, so that a classification could be done.  Unfortunately, it would be done by humans who [naturally] assume they're at the tippy-top and all the other kinds of consciousness must be rated on a scale of pond-slime = 0 ______  H.sapiens = 100. I don't think that would work. 

Yes, this can be done. All we have to do is observe other species and remember that consciousness is NOT thought and is NOT the brain. Consciousness is awareness. All life is sentient, so all life is aware of some things, specifically the need to eat, maintain itself, and reproduce. Any other things that they are aware of can be studied.

Gee

 

[Gees]

On 7/16/2021 at 1:02 PM, joigus said:

I actually was thinking about deep physics. I have a feeling that whatever consciousness is about, it must be deeply ingrained in something physical that divides systems and their local environments according to information. And information is physical, as we now realise.

I did not know that. I have been wondering for some time now if thought is real; I know that emotion is real -- physical -- but was not sure about thought. Can you give me some reference so that I can study this?

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Then human kind as a whole is superconscious, so to speak. And the internet too. Does that make sense? Then, how does it feel to be that superconscience now?

Well I don't know about the internet, but Jung's collective unconscious could be called a superconscious.

Gee

On 7/16/2021 at 4:57 PM, Peterkin said:

Not quite. I think the operative term is "integrated". We're not; we're helter-skelter components. If we were telepathic, we might evolve fully  integrated species-consciousness - either as a containing structure to our individual consciousnesses or a subsuming one.  If we had the chemical perception of ants, our communities (nations? tribes?) would be far more integrated than we are now, but not sufficiently to form a single conscious unit. A world government with plebiscite decision-making capacity on every issue would be a step in the direction of integration, whereas, every rattling sabre, missile, battleship and spy satellite is a dis-connection. 

The integrated species-consciousness that you are referring to would be called the unconscious in us. Jung studied the collective unconscious and found there is at least one for every species and that  it contains an unbelievable amount of information. You can find information on this in Wiki.

No we don't have the obvious chemical perception of ants, but if you consider the riot mentality, you will find that chemicals produced through strong emotion causes a herd-like effect on our behavior. This collective unconscious does not really integrate, but instead connects us through bonding and emotion.
 

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The internet is a different matter. Though there is no upper limit on the scale, allowing at least some of our creations to be rated hyper-conscious, beyond we are able to experience, it would be difficult to devise a measuring mechanism.  We can't measure its  consciousness or its capability and can guess at its potential. (I'll predict one thing: if it comes aware, it comes insane.) 

 

Yes, trying to digest that much information would make anyone or anything insane. I spoke to a neurologist, who explained that just the information in a person's own unconscious mind would be too much to absorb, so trying to absorb the collective unconscious of a species would be ridiculous.

Gee

[joigus]

9 minutes ago, Gees said:

I did not know that. I have been wondering for some time now if thought is real; I know that emotion is real -- physical -- but was not sure about thought. Can you give me some reference so that I can study this?

I can't give you references to something 'I have a feeling' of.  So I suppose you mean the bit about 'information is physical'. Physical systems --whatever the theory we're considering-- have a way of measuring the total amount of information, which is called volume of phase space. Phase-space volume is a way of assigning a measure to the extension of all possible dynamical states accessible to a physical system. The definition can be applied to quantum systems as well as to classical (non-quantum) systems, thermodynamic systems, etc.

Volume of phase space is synonymous to 'amount of information stored in the system':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_space

Another formulation of the relationship between physics and information is Landauer's principle. If you erase one bit of information from a computer, you must do it at the expense of heating up the universe.

On the different definitions of entropy:

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Entropy

[Gees]

On 8/6/2021 at 4:59 AM, Eise said:

So Dennett uses a 'spiritual basis' to explain consciousness? Can you point me to articles/book passages that show he does so?

You are still misquoting people in order to make yourself look good and make them look bad? I thought you just did that to me.

To be fair, I should note that jonnobody did use a complex sentence, so maybe you were just confused. I will underline the main parts of the sentence so that you can follow it.

 

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On 7/15/2021 at 4:25 AM, jonnobody said:

For me it is fairly easy because I have a spiritual basis in my life. For those that haven't a spiritual basis, consciousness is almost impossible to understand or explain as Daniel Dennett discovered.

 

 

You see that word "haven't"? That means that Dennett did NOT use a spiritual basis. Does that clear things up?

Gee

16 minutes ago, joigus said:

I can't give you references to something 'I have a feeling' of.  So I suppose you mean the bit about 'information is physical'. Physical systems --whatever the theory we're considering-- have a way of measuring the total amount of information, which is called volume of phase space. Phase-space volume is a way of assigning a measure to the extension of all possible dynamical states accessible to a physical system. The definition can be applied to quantum systems as well as to classical (non-quantum) systems, thermodynamic systems, etc.

Volume of phase space is synonymous to 'amount of information stored in the system':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_space

Another formulation of the relationship between physics and information is Landauer's principle. If you erase one bit of information from a computer, you must do it at the expense of heating up the universe.

On the different definitions of entropy:

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Entropy

Thank you. I have a starting point now.

Gee

[Eise]

I read the sentence as 'Dennett discovered that it is impossible to explain consciousness to people without a spiritual basis'.

To say that Dennet discovered he does not understand consciousness is absurd: he surely believes he does understand consciousness (why would he otherwise write a book with the title 'Consciousness Explained'?). So how could he have discovered that that he cannot understand consciousness because he has no spiritual basis? It just makes no sense. The only conclusion can be that Dennett discovered that others, who lack a spiritual basis, cannot understand consciousness, they do not understand his explanation. But given that Dennet at least thinks he understands consciousness, it must be his discovery that others lack the spiritual basis needed to understand consciousness. Therefore, Dennett himself must have this spiritual basis, because he understands consciousness (according to himself). 

Others may think that Dennett does not understand consciousness, of course, and they may even say it is because Dennett has no spiritual basis. (Needless to say I do not agree.)  But that is not Dennett's discovery. 

3 hours ago, Gees said:

You are still misquoting people in order to make yourself look good and make them look bad? I thought you just did that to me.

First I was not quoting at all, I followed an implication of what jonnobody said.

And secondly,  between all the arguments we had, I do not remember that you ever blamed me of misquoting you. My main problem with you was that you often used an argument along the lines of  'I researched consciousness many years, so my viewpoint is superior'.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Eise

[dimreepr]

57 minutes ago, Eise said:

My main problem with you was that you often used an argument along the lines of  'I researched consciousness many years, so my viewpoint is superior'.

+1 It's never any fun to be patronised by someone who can't comprehend a sentence... 😉

[Peterkin]

7 hours ago, Gees said:

If you are going to try to understand these threads, you should know that spiritual means emotion/feeling.

If I am going to try to understand something, I shall do so in my own terms of reference, thank you. And if I fail and never understand, that's okay, too.

7 hours ago, Gees said:

To get into the "spirit" of things is to get into the mood.

That's one meaning, yes.

7 hours ago, Gees said:

A spirited horse is one with a lot of feeling.

A spirited horse is one with a volatile temperament; difficult to handle. How do you quantify "feeling", anyway?

7 hours ago, Gees said:

Although few people seem to understand this, religions actually study emotion and they name the entity that leads the emotion, "God". So you in fact are spiritual, cause you are not a psychopath.

Ah! Well, that's a big question answered!

 

6 hours ago, Gees said:

The integrated species-consciousness that you are referring to would be called the unconscious in us.

And there is another. Super-conscious is really un-conscious. I'll just go educate myself on wikipedia...  

6 hours ago, Gees said:

Yes, trying to digest that much information would make anyone or anything insane.

It's not the quantity of information: there is no physical limit on the brain-capacity of computer networks. It would be insane because of the conflicting and contradictory input from all the human users, and because it's not equipped to process all the "feeeeeling".  

[TheVat]

8 hours ago, Gees said:

.... Trees don't think, but they are conscious.

Gee

 

 

I hope this is taken as constructive criticism:  this bold,  unsupported and implausible assertion caused me to stop reading your posts.   At a science forum,  this kind of assertion undercuts any credibility one might be trying to establish.