What is consciousness?

[Deleted member 619]

I don't agree with him. I agree right up until the point when he says that physics is math. That's a simple case of mistaking the map for the terrain. Physics, or more accurately the laws and constants of physics, can certainly be expressed in mathematical form, and indeed that's often how they're presented, but the equations are not the principles themselves.

For further clarification on the information point, no, we don't need two different words. Information is a perfectly serviceable word, because that's what they both are, it's just that there are two very distinct formulations of information when dealing with it in rigorous terms. The first is youor 'transmitter and receiver' conception, which is Shannon information. Shannon information deals with signal integrity. Thus, Shannon information can only ever decrease, and never increase. This is the mistake that creationists make when talking about 'new information in the genome' and 'DNA requiring a designer, because DNA is information, and information requires a mind'. The second formulation of information is Kolmogorov/Chaitlin information, which deals with information storage. In this formulation, any change in a system constitutes an increase in information. DNA is Kolmogorov information.

This is also related to the creationist conception of 'entropy' as 'disorder', when it's nothing of the sort. This is a simple mistake to make, because an increase in disorder can certainly constitute an increase in entropy. Again, entropy is another of those concepts that has two related but distinct formulations. The first and most employed definition is 'the amount of energy in a system that is unavailable to do work'. This is the general definition in physics. The other definition is 'the amount of information required to describe a system' (which can also be expressed as 'the number of ways a system can change without affecting the overall appearance of the system). It is this second definition that is often mistaken or misdefined (often by physicists as well, it must be said) as disorder. I've even read Stephen Hawking describe it thus. The thing is, and as I've said on many occasions, that cosmologists, unlike biologists, are not accustomed to having their words equivocated by those with an agenda. Nobody argues in physics class or twists what is said so that it says what they mean. If you look at that latter definition properly, you can see how it can be related to disorder. If you nthink of a desktop strewn with papers, or highly disordered, a lot of information is required to describe it and, further, you can make little changes by moving the papers around without actually affecting the system very much overall, or the amount of information required to describe it. Here's where the relationship between the two definitions comes in, and is also directly related to the misuse of the second law of thermodynamics that creationists love to employ. You can tidy the desk, thereby reducing it's entropy. However; in order to do so, you must expend energy, or do work, to tidy it. The system then becomes a closed system, because energy is exchanged with the surroundings, and entropy still increases overall, because you are reducing the amount of energy available to do work.

The easiest response to the familiar creationist canard concerning entropy and the second law of thermodynamics (or one of two) is to point to black holes. In a black hole, all the energy/matter in the system is at the singularity. Now, it doesn't get much more ordered than that. However, a black hole is about the most highly entropic entity in the universe, due to the fact that all the energy is tied up at the singularity and therefore unavailable to do work.

To clarify what is meant by 'closed system', I'll post the definitions from Wiki:

* Isolated systems are completely isolated in every way from their environment. They do not exchange heat, work or matter with their environment. An example of an isolated system would be an insulated rigid container, such as an insulated gas cylinder.

* Closed systems are able to exchange energy (heat and work) but not matter with their environment. A greenhouse is an example of a closed system exchanging heat but not work with its environment. Whether a system exchanges heat, work or both is usually thought of as a property of its boundary.

* Open systems: exchanging energy (heat and work) and matter with their environment. A boundary allowing matter exchange is called permeable. The ocean would be an example of an open system.

 

[MRaverz]

Information from your senses.

Nothing more.

What's so special about that? If you didn't have this consciousness, you'd simply have no need for senses.

I wouldn't call consciousness information. Consciousness is awareness. If you're a conscious thing, you're conscious of information and of yourself. But you're not the information.


And I can almost feel Hackenslash typing away there. Boy am I in trouble.

When you receive no information, you experience nothing.

Thus it is not an observation of oneself, but of information received which seems to be about oneself.

If it was a true self observation, it would be experienced all the time as you exist with your senses at all times.

Thus, observation of oneself is an illusion.

 

[5810Singer]

When you receive no information, you experience nothing.

So how do you explain what happens to people undergoing sensory deprivation?

Thus it is not an observation of oneself, but of information received which seems to be about oneself.

See above,....where are you receiving the information from during sensory deprivation?

If it was a true self observation, it would be experienced all the time as you exist with your senses at all times.

Again see above,...explain the experiences of people undergoing sensory deprivation.

Thus, observation of oneself is an illusion.

This is a swingeing generalisation, largely unsupported by observation.

 

[MRaverz]

When you receive no information, you experience nothing.

So how do you explain what happens to people undergoing sensory deprivation?

Could you elaborate?

What exactly do you claim is happening during sensory deprivation? I've been looking but I can't find anything about people's personal experiences of it, just that prolonged experience can kill you.

At first glance it looks similar to meditation.

 

[butterbattle]

'All life is biology. All biology is physiology. All physiology is chemistry. All chemistry is physics. All physics is math'. He could have added that all maths is energy and all energy is consciousness.

Same here.

I agree with him until he says all of physics is math (although, physiology is more a category of biology, so I would just go directly from biology to chemistry). Biology, physiology, chemistry, and physics are all studies of the natural world. All other natural sciences reduce to physics because physics is the most fundamental description of the natural; it is the study of matter, energy and how they interact.

Math is essentially the study of quantity, and as such, is a very useful tool that can be applied to any field of science, including physics. However, physics doesn't reduce to math because math isn't definitively a description of the natural world. So, in principle, you could describe all of biology using only physics. However, it is impossible to describe all of physics using only math. In fact, using only math, you'd have a hard time describing anything in the natural world at all. Imho, math, without referring to reality, is not much more useful than philosophy of the same kind.

Math is not energy. Math is the study of quantity. Energy is a property of systems in this universe. Energy is not consciousness. If consciousness was supernatural, then it could not be energy. Energy is detectable.

 

[butterbattle]

When you receive no information, you experience nothing.

So how do you explain what happens to people undergoing sensory deprivation?

Semantics, semantics.

I suppose you could think of the sudden lack of sensory input as a a kind of "information." Plus, you get "information" from your brain. On the other hand, you could say that no sensory input equals no "information," but you still experience things in spite of that.

Although, can you really have no sensory input? Isn't the deprivation of your senses a kind of "input?"

 

[MRaverz]

When you receive no information, you experience nothing.

So how do you explain what happens to people undergoing sensory deprivation?

Semantics, semantics.

I suppose you could think of the sudden lack of sensory input as a a kind of "information." Plus, you get "information" from your brain. On the other hand, you could say that no sensory input equals no "information," but you still experience things in spite of that.

Although, can you really have no sensory input? Isn't the deprivation of your senses a kind of "input?"

I was kinda thinking along the same lines, either suggesting that other senses still exist (could you still feel your heart beating? etc.) or along the binary 'information, no-information' line.

 

[butterbattle]

I was kinda thinking along the same lines, either suggesting that other senses still exist (could you still feel your heart beating? etc.) or along the binary 'information, no-information' line.

Eh, I didn't mean that there would be potentially a sixth, seventh, or eighth sense, if that's what you're saying.

5810Singer's example was sensory deprivation. That means you have senses, but they're "deprived." If you're thrown in a perfectly dark room, you're deprived of your vision, in a way. But, at the same time, you can still "see." What you would see is blackness. So, you could argue that there's still "information." The darkness is the "information."

The only way there really wouldn't be "information" is if you were born as an organism without any senses whatsoever. We have a hard time even conceiving of being in such a state. Eh, unless you're a microorganism in a safe, stable, and resource-rich environment or someone that has several people taking care them 24/7, you're probably going to die.

Assuming you have a brain, you could still think though. So, that's arguably a source of "information" too.

 

[Andiferous]

Sensory deprivation is an interesting point. The psychedelic experience from sensory deprivation is sometimes used for shamanic type experiences from which a person is purported to gain better insight into themselves as a kind of "spiritual journey."

To say the mind is a complex thing and to say that we don't have the formula to consciousness and awareness is not to suggest there must necessarily be something outside of biology or chemistry working in our heads, just that the workings of our head might be too complicated to explain by basic thought processes. Our mind is not necessarily built on thought processes. Every bit of information our senses pick up alters the biochemical configuration of our brains; but conversely, the configuration of our brains also affects the processing of our sensory input and thought processes, thereby controlling its own development to some extent.

I've already given as good a definition of consciousness as is actually possible from the evidence currently available.

That's really my point. We have very good guesses, but we don't know the recipe for consciousness.

It's not only useful to have a brain, but we control the development of our own brain to some extent, because we are aware of ourselves.

 

[XCalibur5555]

The amount of consciousness can easily be measured by the amount one knows about the forces around them. If you're a living thing, the amount you have manifested is a large contributing factor to how much you can perceive through scientific observation.

This being said, basic lifeforms like everything from mammals to bacteria are not on the same level of consciousness because they differ greatly on the quantum level. Thought process in my opinion has a lot do with level of consciousness because the way you perceive reality, individually, depends on what we know about what can be proved relatively. A fool who knows nothing about human science will never understand the universe, but an open-minded individual could potentially learn everything.

 

[creativesoul]

A distinction needs to be made between data and information.

 

[danrayson]

Here's my two pence, I looked inside myself to try to figure this out, then found some interesting stuff to support my initial thoughts.


I came to the conclusion that the brain is literally the same as a computer. It processes information just like a computer, is feeds back onto itself, it comes up with mathematical solutions. It is LITERALLY a computer, an organisation of received numbers processed in a formula. The universe is readable as mathematics, we all know this. Sound is waves per second, colour is a value of energy in a particle, etc, which get turned into signals by our sense organs.

But then I started thinking a bit more ( ) and realised that consciousness inside a computer was a little retarded, so I tried to break consciousness down into it's component parts.

There must first of all be a computational mechanism to unscramble the information it receives through the senses, just as in a computer's CPU. So the first stage must be the computation of mathematics based information. Second, there must be a second iteration of this information, because an experience is not simply a maths formula being run constantly, we don't experience values or frequencies. This second computation must then be the "experience" of the first solution. An experience, here, is defined as the "feeling" of something, the essence of what a sound is, the essence of what a colour is, etc.

Now, humans are self-aware of these experiences, but animals are not, so in humans there must be a third computation of the "experience" (ie: the second computation.) Self-awareness being the experience of an experience. This is knowing you are experiencing sound, and knowing you can see colours.

So: 1st run = decoding (computation of electrical eye signals, computation of electrical ear signals, etc)
2nd run = experience (essense of "colour", essense of "sound", etc)
3rd run = experience of the experience (awareness of colour existing, awareness of sound existing, etc)

Consciousness therefore cannot be explained by a simple processing of basic information, it's a three layer process, where the results from one computation feed into the second generation of computing, and so on.

Something else I found on the internet to kind of convince you of this three stage thing, http://www.psycheducation.org/emotion/triune%20brain.htm . This'll surprise you if you didn't already know the information contained on that page

So, bare in mind what is said here before you try to explain consciousness as a single, indivisible, fundamental thing. It's not "just" processing of information, it's processing of information that has been processed already, and then again.

Hope this was fun to read It was fun to write. I understand I haven't answered the question exactly, it's just giving a better understanding of what's going on up there.

 

[Blackjoker]

To throw my hat in the ring, I'd argue that consciousness is simply a level of self awareness. It's essentially the ability to think and reason beyond simple instincts (kill, eat, procreate, etc.). Consciousness is arguably the great boon and bane of any species. At its height it can allow for the construction of complex tools, artwork, civilization, language and allow for the discovery of universal principles. At its lowest it makes us shudder at nightmares from things we think we see or hear in the darkness, our minds giving shape to the shapeless to either help us mentally equip ourselves to fight it or to plan against it. Pattern recognition gone awry could explain the formation of religions or of various types of conspiracy theories.

 

[Shydrow]

Well since you can think i would guess that would be consciousness. Then again i think so i think we have to battle to the death for there can only be one consciousness.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/

"Perhaps no aspect of mind is more familiar or more puzzling than consciousness and our conscious experience of self and world. The problem of consciousness is arguably the central issue in current theorizing about the mind. Despite the lack of any agreed upon theory of consciousness, there is a widespread, if less than universal, consensus that an adequate account of mind requires a clear understanding of it and its place in nature. We need to understand both what consciousness is and how it relates to other, nonconscious, aspects of reality."

I agree with it being able to be self-aware of ones self and world. The rest is sorta a question isn't it. I mean in reality we do not interact with are enviorment directly. Are senors do and feed the infromation back to the brain which in turn decodes it in a way to let us view / hear / feel/ and smell. With problems with the brain as well as the sensors we really need to be direct with what it is we wanna consider consciousness. Is it the general overall of everyone that defines it. Or is it based on the individual.

 

[/b/artleby]

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
cout << "I am conscious!";
return 0;
}

I have created consciousness!

 

[FaithlessThinker]

I haven't read everything that you guys have said so far, but I just want to pitch in what I think... or rather what Sam Harris thinks in his "The End of Faith." He talks about the awareness of oneself as "I" is what drives people to believe in a soul or spirit living inside one's body. It's been a while since I last read the book, so I can't remember all the details. Someone who access to the book could perhaps quote and elaborate?

 

[/b/artleby]

I haven't read everything that you guys have said so far, but I just want to pitch in what I think...

Long live the American way! It is so wonderful to see that the true spirit of democracy lives on in the latest generation...

 

[Demojen]

danrayson said:
Now, humans are self-aware of these experiences, but animals are not

Self awareness is always amusing and often tricky, but umm...Humans are animals. Humans are not exclusive in being self-aware in the animal kingdom.
I'm assuming that was a brain fart slipped out while you were wrapping your mind around all of these ideas, but keep this in mind. A great number of studies have been performed on animals that are not human, who not only demonstrate the existence of being aware of themselves, but also a level of intelligence that is in continuously in developmental stages.

It's amazing though how humans often times characterize themselves the smartest creatures on the planet, and further we characterize the smartest recognized humans. Anyone who believes in Evolution can acknowledge that higher levels of intelligence often lead to a greater chance of survival and thus on many levels it is natural for intelligence to develop in cultures as species evolve and gain a greater and greater capacity for understanding.

I am not referring strictly to memes, but to the growth of brains in animals and their neurological development within different environments too.

For these reasons, I see no reason to believe that in the future we can not help other animals reach higher intelligence amidst their self awareness so that, while we may like to believe there is intelligent life beyond the milky way that we're just missing...We may one day acknowledge and recognize the potential for our own earthlings to take their place.

We are not alone in the universe.
We just can't see the forest for the trees.

 

[simonecuttlefish]

I think, therefore I am ... so why don't creationists all just vanish?

Some youtube clickage (sorry if this were previously linked - I didn't notice them though.



I've also see dolphins twisting themselves into all sorts of contortions, to look at themselves in a mirror to check out the fake tattoos put on them by researchers.

consciousness is a really hard term to work on. Are we talking about sentience? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience
Sentience is the ability to feel or perceive. The term is used in science and philosophy, and in the study of artificial intelligence. Sentience is used in the study of consciousness to describe the ability to have sensations or experiences, known to Western philosophers as "qualia". In eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires respect and care.

Anyone who has had a pet cat or dog has known just how self aware at least some animals can be. There is so much research going on now, it isn't an issue that animal self awareness exists, in at least some species. Watching a chimp use sign language to greet a previous keeper/researcher it hasn't seen in many years, and then talk about the birthday party the keeper had given this chimp all those years ago is quite disturbing. Especially when the chimp says how horrible it is being locked in it's tiny cage all the time. The chimp was taught sign language in an animal communication test. Then it was later reused in a simian aids experiment, and got shoved into a little cage and left on a shelf for years, as it could not be mixed with other chimps.

Dolphins, chimps, dogs and children can display awareness, I'm sure humans can

What about Slime Moulds? If a slime mould colony can work out the shortest path through a maze, is it conscious?
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s189608.htm

 

[/b/artleby]

Oh wait, an error...

#include <iostream>
#include<FreeWill.h>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
cout << "I am conscious!";
return 0;
}

There we go!