Can our consciousness last forever?

[Neanderthal]

Well, I still think it is a unicorn question. First, the consciousness is not static - would be rather pointless if it was. My consciousness in ten years will differ from the one I have right now. Now, moving on to "forever"... Second, shave off the prefrontal cortex. Are you still conscious? If the answer is maybe, pull out the hippocampus, cut the corpus callossum, etc. Still conscious? At some point we loose consciousness - whatever it is defined as. Then only two things can be true: either consciousness is a function of the wireing in the brain and is lost with the brain, or consciousness exists outside the brain and just uses the brainfunctions - if the functions are there. If the last is true, then where was my consciousness before I was born? Maybe in a well behaved fruitfly? Welcome Hindusim, Jainism, etc. I really hate questions that end up in religion.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Well, I still think it is a unicorn question. First, the consciousness is not static - would be rather pointless if it was. My consciousness in ten years will differ from the one I have right now. Now, moving on to "forever"... Second, shave off the prefrontal cortex. Are you still conscious? If the answer is maybe, pull out the hippocampus, cut the corpus callossum, etc. Still conscious? At some point we loose consciousness - whatever it is defined as. Then only two things can be true: either consciousness is a function of the wireing in the brain and is lost with the brain, or consciousness exists outside the brain and just uses the brainfunctions - if the functions are there. If the last is true, then where was my consciousness before I was born? Maybe in a well behaved fruitfly? Welcome Hindusim, Jainism, etc. I really hate questions that end up in religion.

Nobody said that the right answer is similar to religious claims, or that there must be a disembodied conscious, or that it is physical, abstract or something else altogheter. And what if it was?
You can protest that whatever we are pondering here can never be proven, confirmed, hinted at, have any bearing in reality or even be a convicing proposition. And you would have been right.
But this is philosophy, you can ponder things just for their own sake and get a kick out of it.

 

[Neanderthal]

I totally agree, and that was just what I did - pondering the question. Only my first thought was "unicorn". There are a finite number of semantically correct questions. Very few of these make any sense. Some of these make a little sense, some a lot. Where does one draw the line for what makes sense? What criteria may exist for deciding whether a question is "reasonable valid or a unicorn question"? Maybe my Asbergers is getting worse, but questions like "if there were no photons, what color would strawberries have" makes my heart rate go up. So when I see a question containing both " consciousness" and "for ever"...

Anyway, our brain is a fascinating thing. And the notion of "something called consciousness" is familiar to us all. Without defining exactly what it means, we can still demand that a few criteria be fulfilled. For instance, is free will necessary for there to be a consciousness? Is the brain generating its own thoughts - i.e. if you took out the brain and isolated it completely from outside stimulus, would it think? The brain follows the laws of physics (if it didn't, life would be very interesting), ergo some computational mechanism would be able to simulate everything the brain does - but if the brain in an isolated jar does not think, then you need to simulate all the stimulus also. The brain is probably a vast computing machine converting outside stimulus to "something". Consciousness to me is an end product of computation. It does nothing in itself, it doesn't generate new thoughts - and according to modern neuroscience the notion of free will is probably an illusion also. So asking if a "virtual" end product will last forever is slightly elevating my heart rate.

 

[devilsadvocate]

To me the most peculiar property of consciousness is that it only exists in subjective experience, or rather, enables subjective experience. There seems to be an impenetrable barrier between what goes on in the consciousness and the rest of the world (between subjective and objective). Yet consciousness comes with enormous range of qualitative "feelings" which seem to me to be ontologically special. I wouldn't go as far to say they are real like bricks are, but neither does dealing away with them entirely seem appropriate.

To clarify, I'm not to saying there aren't neural correlates to conscious experiences or that qualitative phenomena aren't depended on the physical, but that physical brain states are NOT the experience. What I mean is perhaps best clarified by example. In philosophy of mind this thought-experiment by Frank Jackson is known by the name "Mary's room".

"Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like 'red', 'blue', and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence 'The sky is blue'. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?"

The point of course being that Mary, with all her knowledge of human brains and the neural networks and such like that go into experiencing color, still learns something new when she sees color. What it feels like.

Likewise, and this is Thomas Nagel's similar thought-experiment, we can go about dissecting bat brains, learning about it's sonar capabilities, looking at fmri's all century long, and we will find out how it works, but we won't penetrate the barrier between spheres of consciousness. We won't, ever, no matter how much we know about bats, find out what it feels like to be a bat.

Another interesting thing to note about qualitative phenomena is that their existence absolutely depends on the consciousness. You won't find them anywhere else, but in the conscious experience. Consider pain, for example. What kind of pain is the kind you're not aware of? It's obviously no pain at all. It makes little sense to say, "I was in so much pain last night, but fortunately I wasn't conscious of it."

 

[devilsadvocate]

The brain follows the laws of physics (if it didn't, life would be very interesting), ergo some computational mechanism would be able to simulate everything the brain does

There's an thought-experiment called "the chinese nation", I forgot whose it is, but basically the idea is that if we arrange all the chinese to communicate between themselves in the way neurons in the brain do, will that system gain consciousness? The point is to showcase how silly idea functionalism is.


MasterGhostNight,

Consicous seems to be an experiened shared by everyone, yet nobody knows what it is or have any reason to sugest tha it is even there. It has an answer, it may just be senseless, pointless or unknowable.

I don't understand how you can be skeptical of the existence of your own consciousness. It seems to me like you are worried whether your brain is pulling some kind of trick on you. Nudger already touched on the solution, when he said "but an illusion is still a something because it is that illusion that distinguises me from a creature without consciousness".

Ok, so consciousness might not be, and probably isn't, what I think it is, but in order for me to be wrong about it, I have to have a conception of it in my consciousness. So in any case, consciousness must exist. John Searle said it best when he said something like "When it comes to consciousness, appearance is reality".

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

MasterGhostNight,

Consicous seems to be an experiened shared by everyone, yet nobody knows what it is or have any reason to sugest tha it is even there. It has an answer, it may just be senseless, pointless or unknowable.

I don't understand how you can be skeptical of the existence of your own consciousness. It seems to me like you are worried whether your brain is pulling some kind of trick on you. Nudger already touched on the solution, when he said "but an illusion is still a something because it is that illusion that distinguises me from a creature without consciousness".

Ok, so consciousness might not be, and probably isn't, what I think it is, but in order for me to be wrong about it, I have to have a conception of it in my consciousness. So in any case, consciousness must exist. John Searle said it best when he said something like "When it comes to consciousness, appearance is reality".

But I don't particularly like that answer, because to say that "you have to have the conception of it in my consciousness" you must assume that such is what you are actually doing, i.e. you have to indirectly assume that which you are trying to conclude.
There is no doubt in my mind that I am aware of this concepts, but when I talk of conscious I talk about my personal experience of being aware, and I have no doubt that I have that to. But wouldn't I also have no doubt of having it even if I didn't? After all I don't even know exactly what it means. How does one tell that something has it but another thing doesn't? Surely to act as if it had one does not indicate either or not something has a conscious.
How could I not be skeptical?

 

[Neanderthal]

Yes, the China brain or the Chinese nation thought experiment . Heard of it but haven't read Ned Block's article myself. So assume you have enough chinese people to simulate all the things a human brain does, every neurotransmitter, electric and magnetic fields, oxygen levels, bloodsugar levels - everything according to the laws of physics (assuming we know the laws of physics). We then have a perfect functional copy of a brain. Doing the same thing twice, we should not expect different results - regardless of how silly it sounds.

 

[CommonEnlightenment]

Yes, the China brain or the Chinese nation thought experiment . Heard of it but haven't read Ned Block's article myself. So assume you have enough chinese people to simulate all the things a human brain does, every neurotransmitter, electric and magnetic fields, oxygen levels, bloodsugar levels - everything according to the laws of physics (assuming we know the laws of physics). We then have a perfect functional copy of a brain. Doing the same thing twice, we should not expect different results - regardless of how silly it sounds.

Ahh,

But what if the experiences that are encountered the second time around are slightly different, does this effect our definition of consciousness? Can the 'collective consciousness' come into play the second time around? Meaning that if you are able to share a different consciousness the second time around would things or could things be different? Is consciousness time dependent, time invarient, or time independent? Can we even really define consciousness in those terms?

Or do you just say....... Screw it with all this highbrow talk and just ask her out on a date and see where it goes?

I added that last part for a little release.

If things are really strictly determinate but we don't know the outcomes would we really know the outcome? Perhaps consciousness could be defined in terms of determinism but from an individuals point of view?

 

[devilsadvocate]

But I don't particularly like that answer, because to say that "you have to have the conception of it in my consciousness" you must assume that such is what you are actually doing, i.e. you have to indirectly assume that which you are trying to conclude.
There is no doubt in my mind that I am aware of this concepts, but when I talk of conscious I talk about my personal experience of being aware, and I have no doubt that I have that to. But wouldn't I also have no doubt of having it even if I didn't? After all I don't even know exactly what it means. How does one tell that something has it but another thing doesn't? Surely to act as if it had one does not indicate either or not something has a conscious.
How could I not be skeptical?

I'll try to be more clear this time around, and forgive me if I'm not.

Descartes, when he tried to find axioms that must necessarily be true ended up with the now very famous statement "Cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am". To understand the statements power you must recognize that it is impossible to doubt it. The very act of doubting is proof that you think, and if you can think, you must exist.

Ok, assuming you are persuaded that this must be the case, let's consider the implications of Descartes axiom. The "I" in the statement is arguably vague, since it's possible we have wrong idea of what it means to be what we think we are. It's possible that the existence of "me", in both thought and extension, are just pale ideas of what it really means to exist. It doesn't however seem that it's possible to be wrong about the existence of a thought. What is a thought without someone having it? What is a thought that nobody has?

To be fair, It's possible that I attribute thoughts to phenomena that do not have it. Let's say a philosophical zombie that looked and acted just like a human being would come knocking on my door asking for sugar to borrow. How would I know if that "thing" only had all the lights on, but nobody is really home? If I punched it in the face it would gulp and react as if I hurt it's feelings, but really it was just cleverly reacting to stimuli imitating rules humans have on social interaction. This is what behaviourists want to claim of all conscious experience - That one is just an information processing system with inputs and outputs without "a soul in the machine", if you will.

Can I then doubt if I'm conscious or not? Well, I can in the simplistic terms of behaviorists. If I am, on the other hand, aware of any doubt that comes into my mind, this bit of insight is already enough for me to be conscious. One way to point out how silly the scheme is to understand the opposition.

Behaviourists have to say, that no no no, you aren't aware of your doubt, it only effects your behaviour in the way a philosophical zombie would react, but you can't actually experience any doubt or, for that matter, experience anything at all. To them, I'm just writing what I'm writing as reaction to stimuli, but nobody's really home, and when you're reading this, there's nobody home either. You aren't actually experiencing anything. We're just dumb input-output machines. It's all about stimuli going in and reaction coming out like a somewhat more sophisticated pocket calculator.

(Just to clarify, I'm not against determinism when it comes to brains necessarily, just against the idea consciousness doesn't exist)

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Descartes, when he tried to find axioms that must necessarily be true ended up with the now very famous statement "Cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am". To understand the statements power you must recognize that it is impossible to doubt it. The very act of doubting that you think is proof that you think, and if you can think, you must exist.

But I don't even grant Descartes conclusion, even tough I have no problems of accepting it as far as this argument goes. But even granting it, it doesn't actually apply to our case, because it is never specified that "you" is a conscious being or a simple input output machine. The fact that "you" exist and think does not mean that "you" are conscious, you need something more to do that.

To be fair, It's possible that I attribute thoughts to phenomena that do not have it. Let's say a philosophical zombie that looked and acted just like a human being would come knocking on my door asking for sugar to borrow. How would I know if that "thing" only had all the lights on, but nobody is really home? If I punched it in the face it would gulp and react as if I hurt it's feelings, but really it was just cleverly reacting to stimuli imitating rules humans have on social interaction. This is what behaviourists wanted to claim of all conscious experience - That one is just an input-output machine with "no soul in the machine", if you will.

Can I then doubt if I'm conscious or not? Well, of course I can, the difference being I am aware of any doubt that comes into my mind, and this small bit of insight is already enough for me to be conscious.

But what does it mean to be aware? Does it mean to hold information that encodes whatever you are aware of? But does that mean that for instance when the doctor hits you in the knee and the spinal cord moves the leg in a jerk reaction, wouldn't this be information about being hit and moving the leg and thus be conscious by this definition? But yet you are hardly aware of this, it was as if it happened to someone else.
But maybe you are right, and that is all it means to be conscious, it just happens that the knee jerk reaction is not something that happens in a paralel circuitry to you.

One way to point out how silly the scheme is to understand the opposition. They have to say, that no no no, you aren't aware of your doubt, it only effects your behaviour in the way a philosophical zombie would react, but you can't actually experience any doubt or, for that matter, experience anything at all. To them, I'm just writing what I'm writing as reaction to stimuli, but nobody's really home, and when you're reading this, there's nobody home either. You aren't actually experiencing anything. We're just dumb input-output machines. It's all about stimuli going in and reaction coming out like a somewhat more sophisticated pocket calculator.

I hear what you say, but are we any differet? Sure it would have to be one sofisticated calcultor, but complexity isn't a criteria, is it?
If you asked me a couple of years ago I would have said, "No we can't reproduce human thinking in computers", but as I have learned more now I can see how that could be done (although not in a near future). The requiered computers would not be that much different than your regular desktop (perhaps faster with some specially dedicated hardwear for some functions). If we were to develop a AI gooed enough to pass any Turing test, would he be conscious? I don't know the answer to that.

You can say, that with my own picky definition of conscious and what I requier to convince myself that I have painted myself into a corner and I can not be convinced or convice myself by any philosophy. Well maybe I have, and I may now recognise that, but I can no longer lower that standard. So I guess we will have to agree to disagree, or actually remaining unconvinced.

 

[devilsadvocate]

I'll try and expand on this later on but, just few quick observations:

The fact that "you" exist and think does not mean that "you" are conscious, you need something more to do that.

The point was that is one needs to be aware of one's thoughts or they aren't thoughts. A thought nobody thinks is non-existent.

But does that mean that for instance when the doctor hits you in the knee and the spinal cord moves the leg in a jerk reaction, wouldn't this be information about being hit and moving the leg and thus be conscious by this definition?

Here you are making a difference between consciousness and a reflex - a reaction that isn't depended on the consciousness. This is what behaviourists and other thinkers have proposed all conscious phenomena is. And is so without any qualititative feeling accompaying it, like feeling of pain or happiness or whatever.

I don't have so much problem with the deterministic aspect of it, but the denial of what is blindingly obviously true.

 

[Neanderthal]

Ahh,

But what if the experiences that are encountered the second time around are slightly different, does this effect our definition of consciousness? Can the 'collective consciousness' come into play the second time around? Meaning that if you are able to share a different consciousness the second time around would things or could things be different? Is consciousness time dependent, time invarient, or time independent? Can we even really define consciousness in those terms?

That would be marvelous. I the setup with the chinese didn't work, we had learned nothing. But if we had a completely different result, not a negative one - flatline, but very different then (given that we had simulated a brain to perfection) somethng else is driving the brain. BUT that something doesn't correspond to our physical laws ( since we assumed we know all physical laws). Even if something like a collective consciousness exists, it must follows physical laws. I don't like the "must" in the previous sentence, but even if I really try I can't imagine anything which doesn't follow the laws of physics. If you found something that didn't, it wouldn't interract with this universe, or..?

Or do you just say....... Screw it with all this highbrow talk and just ask her out on a date and see where it goes?
I added that last part for a little release.

Thank you for that.

If things are really strictly determinate but we don't know the outcomes would we really know the outcome? Perhaps consciousness could be defined in terms of determinism but from an individuals point of view?

Yes - statistically, and it probably can be. The way you process stimulus is similar to mine, but not identical. The way you enjoy your beer is different from mine. And when you say "from an individuals point of view" you have put a consciousness into the equation again. A consciousness is self-referential, and maybe that is all a consciousness is - the ability to be self-referential. Like Douglas R. Hofstadter's "strange loop".

The only thing that makes sence to me is if consciousness is an end product of brain functionality. If the brain is a tap, then consciousness is the water flowing out of it - and it's down the drain immediately after.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

but the denial of what is blindingly obviously true.

And my problem is exactly that, being "blindingly obvious" for me does not equate necessarily to truth, beause I have learned to distinguish both. Sure I can even grant you the assumption that there is some form of conscious to be used on some other argument that does not relate directly to conscious itself (this one is not the case). But I can not grant the assumption of conscious to establish the existance of conscious on the basis of it being obvious.
You can say, "but essentially that is all there is", and you would be right, it is just not enough for me. I rather let it still be an assumption, contemplate this sort of things and let it go either way, I am leaning towards it being ilusory at least in the concept of conscious that I am most familiar with (I have no problem with other concepts of conscious like what Neanderthal has propoused, granted the distinction between them is still a bit grey to me).

 

[CommonEnlightenment]

Could people hide or limit the 'consciousness' that they exhibit to the outside world? If this is the case, I think it becomes very difficult to evaluate the concept of consciousness. I think people do this sort of thing all the time. Let's say an individual has a very good suspicion that a group of people are trying to elicit a certain prescribed response and this person decides to partially conceal this 'consciousness' in hopes that the offending group will just get 'real'? Can we really get a good idea of what 'consciousness' is if it is hidden? I'm not saying that this person is deviant or defective in anyway, just perhaps this person only wishes to get close and express themselves to certain trusted individuals? I mean could the level of consciousness one displays be a function of the level of trust that one has with a certain group of people? Just something to ponder, I suppose.


What is the group trying to accomplish? What could possibly be the goal of the group? Is it to force some sort of conformity? Is it that the group could be pissed or jealous? Could it be that the group wants something that the individual can't give or won't give? And does the individual HAVE to give something to the group? Perhaps the group would see it as a token of acceptance or belongingness, while the individual would see it as a violation of that person's self?

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[CommonEnlightenment]

Yes - statistically, and it probably can be. The way you process stimulus is similar to mine, but not identical. The way you enjoy your beer is different from mine. And when you say "from an individuals point of view" you have put a consciousness into the equation again. A consciousness is self-referential, and maybe that is all a consciousness is - the ability to be self-referential. Like Douglas R. Hofstadter's "strange loop".

The only thing that makes sence to me is if consciousness is an end product of brain functionality. If the brain is a tap, then consciousness is the water flowing out of it - and it's down the drain immediately after.

Oh a 'stream of consciousness' analogy?

I would agree that the way we process information is not a constant or that the way we process information is best comprehended in one specific way or through one specific sense. People that have a deficiency in one specific sense can make up for it by honing or developing other senses on a more case specific basis. But I think what we can do is try to explain the feelings that one specific individual gets (the I) when a certain set of stimuli are present.

Here is one personal example. I tried to explain to someone the awe that I experience when I view certain objects through a telescope. At points, I have experienced a sense of complete and utter awe and had 'goose bumps' develop when I have captured certain galaxies, nebula, or planets through the lens of a telescope. I then tried to share that experience by putting it in terms that the other might understand. What if the person I'm having a conversation with experiences the same sort of physical or emotional experiences when listening to a certain piece of music? The 'goose bumps' the sense of 'awe'? Is this what you mean by conscious thought? Attributing and sharing some sort of physical or emotional connectedness? Being aware of the 'moment'?

Also, I think that those emotions can somehow be mapped in a fMRI or something, no? I mean mapped in the brain? Perhaps gaining a better statistical understanding of certain emotions and 'feelings'? It seems that psychology is trying to move in this direction, no? Trying to become a discipline that is guided by actual physical results? And yes I understand that those physical results that are displayed on a monitor do have the intensity and feeling of emotion.

Could consciousness ever be mapped by some sort of device? I guess it depends on the definition, no?

Are you trying to separate the mind from the brain?

 

[Neanderthal]

"Oh a 'stream of consciousness' analogy?"

Sorry about that. It was not my intention an going poetic over your back side.

"Being aware of the 'moment'?"

Yes! That's the wording of it. Beautiful! Consciousness is like a GUI of some sort, it has little to do with the inner workings of a computer, it is just a way to represent what is happening inside right now, showing the moment.

"The awareness of the moment GUI" is the end product of brain computation. The brain builds models, it infers (from stored patterns) and construct virtual models of anything - all the time. Crap models are killed fast, because regions in the brain that usually deals with this particular kind (based on previous stored patterns) of model has no significant output when processing that crap pattern - and the signal dies out. Good models (based still on previously stored patterns) will be bounced back and forth in the brain reaching every brain region - some with no significant output ( the smell region will not have much to output regarding galaxies) - while other will magnify (input to output) the signal locally. The "awe" you mention when you have captured certain galaxies, nebula, or planets ( and oh boy can I relate to that) is a magnified signal - that pattern has even triggered "goose bumps" functionality in the brain. I guess the "awe" can be anything really. Religious people have it all the time it seems. The brain of e.g. connoisseurs will magnify a simple smell input such that it reaches all sense regions in the brain and they can visualize the dish, feel the taste, feel the spatter of burning oil on their forearms, etc., etc.

My main point is that consciousness is not "a ding an sich". It is not a separate thing you can measure - it's the "sum" of everything.

" Could consciousness ever be mapped by some sort of device? I guess it depends on the definition, no?"

I don't believe that. Well, as I see it everything that goes on in the brain is related to consciousness, but you can't point to a map (fmri or whatever) and say: "that's the consciousness". If you control all the parameters, you can play back a series of thoughts and feelings - but you cannot transfer that playback to another brain - you could, but the result would not be the same in the other brain.

" Are you trying to separate the mind from the brain?"

No, because the mind (or consciousness) is the functionality, the end product, of the whole body - and especially the brain.

Just to mention it: I believe that the reason why there has been so much controversy surrounding the notion of consciousness is because it is self referential in nature. It seems that when one confronts self-reference it leads to strange non intuitive things and paradoxes ( Russell's paradox in set theory, Gà¶del's incompleteness theorem, Turing computability, etc. )

 

[devilsadvocate]

MasterGhostKnight,

Just to get to some common ground here or understand where our definitions collide on the problem, I would like to know how you'd answer these two questions:

Is it possible for you to be wrong about feeling pain or joy? I don't mean the why's or the definition, but about the raw feeling.

Do you think it's possible for you to feel pain or joy, without being aware of it?

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

MasterGhostKnight,

Just to get to some common ground here or understand where our definitions collide on the problem, I would like to know how you'd answer these two questions:

Is it possible for you to be wrong about feeling pain or joy? I don't mean the why's or the definition, but about the raw feeling.

Do you think it's possible for you to feel pain or joy, without being aware of it?

Yes on the first, but no on the second to the extent that it must be experienced and that "being happy but not being aware that you are in this state called happy" doesn't count (which would fall into the first category, and then the answer would be yes).

Being happy =/= knowing of being happy =/= being fullyconvinced of being happy (in a bipolar sense)

 

[Sparky]

Is it possible for you to be wrong about feeling pain or joy? I don't mean the why's or the definition, but about the raw feeling.

With regard to this question, does the phenomena of experiencing a burning sensation when someone drops ice cubes on your bare back at the beach while exclaiming "Oh $&!%, the hot coals!" count?

 

[Demojen]

I have no consciousness. Being conscious does not make you consciousness.
It's a bit of a red herring, because to dismiss the existence of consciousness, people assume you're dismissing being conscious. I'm not. When you're having fun, are you inherently fun? When you're happy, are you happiness?
You are not what you think. The whole is equal to the sum of its parts.
Your answer; quite simply, is no.

Show me one bit of empiracle evidence that supports the existence of a consciousness.

Why are people so obsessed with possessions? "My life. My consciousness."

To that, it's in my signature.