# The mystery of consciousness



## Venusian Broon (Jan 21, 2015)

I enjoyed this article quite a lot, hence I'm posting the it for perusal for those who may also be interested in the subject matter...

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...ds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness

...but am really none the wiser (along with everything else thankfully, as the article basically says) so will have to do a bit closer research and think long and hard about it, with a cold wet towel strapped around my head, just to get the basics clear in my head.


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## HareBrain (Jan 21, 2015)

I love this stuff. I read that this morning, and even commented!


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## Venusian Broon (Jan 21, 2015)

Yes I find it all utterly fascinating HB. 

I mean it's something we all intimately experience every waking moment (and some sleeping moments too) and yet we're almost speechless at trying to understand it. 

I loved the line:  " _If we struggle to understand what it could possibly mean for the mind to be physical, maybe that’s because we are, to quote the American philosopher Josh Weisberg, in the position of “squirrels trying to understand quantum mechanics”. In other words: “It’s just not going to happen.”_ "


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## mosaix (Jan 21, 2015)

Although the article says "_the mystery of conscious awareness goes deeper than a purely material science can explain_" that doesn't mean to say that there isn't an explanation. Consciousness only exists within the realms of an electro-biological-mechanical construct and ceases to exist when that construct is interrupted by, for example, a general anaesthetic and maybe, according to one's personal beliefs, death.

The article also says _'non-conscious humanoids don’t exist, of course',_ but we don't know that's true.


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## Ray McCarthy (Jan 21, 2015)

mosaix said:


> Consciousness only exists within the realms of an electro-biological-mechanical construct


Maybe...


mosaix said:


> interrupted by, for example, a general anaesthetic


Perhaps...


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## HareBrain (Jan 21, 2015)

Can we even define consciousness in terms other than itself?

If I look at a flower and clear my mind of all thought, in what way is that different from a CCTV camera aimed at a street and receiving the image? Gut feel tells us there is a difference, but can we define it in terms other than "one is conscious and the other not"?


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## mosaix (Jan 21, 2015)

HareBrain said:


> Can we even define consciousness in terms other than itself?
> 
> If I look at a flower and clear my mind of all thought



Can you do that HB? Totally clear your mind of *all* thought? Doesn't the view of the flower itself bring about thoughts of flowers, colours etc? As soon as I try and clear my mind of all thought I tend to fall asleep anyway.

For me, the great mystery of consciousness is: Why am I me? Why aren't I the man across the street? Why aren't I the guy on the TV? At the moment I became concious the *I *bit of me suddenly became resident in the head that happens to be on my shoulders and not someone else's? Why?


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## HareBrain (Jan 21, 2015)

mosaix said:


> Can you do that HB? Totally clear your mind of *all* thought?



Yes, I have done, though it's not easy, and I have to spend a while first gently guiding away thoughts that arise. What you're left with is pure sensory awareness, with no conscious interpretation. It's actually a very intense experience (whilst also being very calm).

One of the times I managed it was during a meal, a dish I'd cooked for myself many times before. This time, I became much more aware of the flavours: they were so intense and fresh, it was as though i were discovering the sense of taste for the first time. I spent so long savouring each mouthful that I felt full by the time I'd eaten only half the amount I'd normally have wolfed down.


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## Ray McCarthy (Jan 21, 2015)

Are you who you were yesterday, or you just have some memories of yesterday,
or 5min ago.


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## Venusian Broon (Jan 21, 2015)

Ok HB, I might come back to the flower and CCTV camera later...

But this state of pure sensory awareness - I'm guessing is some sort of meditative state* - something niggles at me, maybe it's just the choice of words. From what your saying, I'm interpreting 'clearing your mind of all thoughts' as equivalent to 'aware but not being conscious' i.e. just like a CCTV camera. But is it? The paradox for me is if that were the case how would you know you were experiencing an intense experience, compared to normal circumstances? There seems to me to be still some sort of subliminal consciousness at work making that judgement. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* that sounds quite cool BTW, I've never tried meditation so might be something to look into


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## HareBrain (Jan 21, 2015)

Venusian Broon said:


> The paradox for me is if that were the case how would you know you were experiencing an intense experience, compared to normal circumstances? There seems to me to be still some sort of subliminal consciousness at work making that judgement.



Good point. (And yes, it is meditation.) But I have answers. The judgement that it is a more intense state is of course a thought, not really subliminal at all. And thoughts do arise from time to time during that state (unless you're very well practised) and some of those thoughts might be about the nature of that experience. So you could go ten seconds, say, without a thought, and then you'd find yourself thinking how cool it is, and then you find yourself thinking, oh crap, I'm thinking!, and you gently have to re-establish the state of non-thought.

But mostly, though, the judgement comes from reflecting on the experience afterwards.

I'd still say that even a state of complete non-thought awareness is not the same as a CCTV camera being aware of its video feed. But then again, how would we know?


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## Ray McCarthy (Jan 21, 2015)

CCTV "sees" purely the light from the object.
We do not see like that at all, that much is known. Even though our experience starts with light focused on the retina, we see a little more than is really there. Sometimes we don't see things that are there. Also the eyes, the focus, the head all make slight movements. Even without two eyes (cover one) for stereoscopic perception we perceive 3D and distance (though not as well).

We know it's a flower.  Even the most advanced programs (written and depending on humans!) have difficulty with that. The CCTV is an inanimate two dimensional array of numbers. Even viewing a stereo CCTV image isn't the same as direct viewing either. The image is compressed to a single plane.


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## J-Sun (Jan 22, 2015)

I actually didn't care for the squirrel line because it implies a "small creature before the vast mysteries" viewpoint when it might be better expressed (as I believe I've read somewhere - not a coining of my own) that it's like a scalpel trying to dissect itself or, perhaps more appropriately, the eye trying to see itself. (Even in a mirror, the eye does not see itself but sees its reflection. "This is not a pipe.")

Random thoughts: Nietzsche's discussion of consciousness as an "epiphenomenon" kept, um, recurring as I read. Kind of a non-determining byproduct or exhaust of the machinery - ex post facto rationalizations of everything. One of the points (along with the "eternal recurrence") that I don't care for from a fascinating thinker, but who knows?

There are lots of great SF stories about consciousness but probably the best most recent one was in the January/February _Analog_ (alas, its only place of publication so far) by the Vanderbilt physicist Robert Scherrer called "Descartes's Stepchildren" (little paragraph in here about it) and I'm more eager than ever to get around to reading Peter Watts' _Blindsight_.

Speaking of, to wax silly - doesn't the discussion of "D.B." give us a readily graspable mechanism for ESP if we wanted it? He can "read" a card he can't "see" with nearly 90% (though why not 100%?) accuracy. Imagine a kingdom full of eye-damaged people and a few DBs - It'd seem just like a person amongst us who could "read" a Rhine card turned away from him that none of us but the tester can "see". It would seem "psychic". Perhaps there are sensible aspects to thoughts, timestreams, ways to move things, whatever, that we simply don't consciously perceive? I don't buy this but it gives an easy way to firm up your "psi fi". 

And it's nice to know that the guy who edits my _Oxford Companion to Philosophy_ (Ted Honderich) and his good buddy Colin McGinn are representing their field with dignity and with nothing but truth and goodness as their goals.  (_Everybody_ "are people, too.")

I can't remember the name of the argumentative fallacy (even if it has a name) but the comment by Massimo Pigliucci on the zombie thought-experiment is the kind of thing that drives me nuts. He attacks the analogy (which he doesn't like as a matter of taste) and acts like that somehow refutes the argument the zombie thing is meant to illustrate. That, and that it's the type of arrogant _faux_-mature sort of response that implies a straight-jacketed mind. It's hard to imagine "Let’s relegate zombies to B-movies and try to be a little more serious about our philosophy, shall we?" as being said in anything but an unctuous patronizing drawl. (Do - presumably - Italians drawl?) Nietzsche, again, had something to say about the "spirit of gravity".

Anyway, yes - a very interesting (albeit avowedly long) article. Thanks for posting!


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## HareBrain (Jan 22, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> We know it's a flower.



That's true. Even if you look at it without thinking at all, and so don't attach the word "flower" to it, there's no question of not being familiar with it.


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## Venusian Broon (Jan 22, 2015)

J-Sun said:


> And it's nice to know that the guy who edits my _Oxford Companion to Philosophy_ (Ted Honderich) and his good buddy Colin McGinn are representing their field with dignity and with nothing but truth and goodness as their goals.  (_Everybody_ "are people, too.")



oh this thread really splinters easy - I will get back to that flower (I'm seeing a daffodil or something yellow) and the camera...

After my own limited experience in the rarefied ivory tower world of scientific research, this sort of cattiness and bitchiness seems the norm. In fact I'd argue for a number of reasons it can be much worse: fields of study tend to be (if you are lucky) 30-40 researchers looking at that specific field - usually many fewer - the same faces year-in year-out, pressure to obtain funding and attract students means that there is much pressure to be #1, leading and the best, and in established fields you tend to get a few very successful 'titans' who generally train the next few generations of researchers in this field - which does lead to the whole gamut of parent/offspring, sibling and 'you not one of the family' relationships. So such dynamics are ripe for a great deal of negativeness to come shining through . 

Of course I am generalising and there are of course people fair and dignified 'with nothing but truth and goodness as their goals'. But only if they discovered something brilliant first 

Regarding the squirrels. The second I read it I got the image of squirrel professor Nutkins in a tweed waistcoat smoking a pipe, in front the obligatory formula choked blackboard looking highly perplexed. Of course the blackboard is full of the usual mish-mash of half-broken formulae that every TV show puts on a blackboard to make the person look very 'scientific' and clever, so the silly little squirrel ain't going to solve quantum mechanics with them...


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## Stephen Palmer (Jan 22, 2015)

This is something I've been thinking about for 30 years, and, rather than comment on things above, or on the article itself (which I'm about to read), I'm going to put out some pointers, since many commenters above said the subject is something that fascinates them. So, if you are interested, these are my authors of choice to go for:

Nicholas Humphrey
Daniel Dennett
Douglas Hofstadter
Antonio Damasio

of related interest: David Lewis-Williams, Steven Mithen, Erich Fromm.

Hope this helps all you self-searchers!


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## Stephen Palmer (Jan 22, 2015)

Interesting article, but not much more than an overview, and of a limited number of viewpoints. I do echo the article author's recommendation on Robin Dunbar's books.

I've got David Chalmers' book _The Conscious Mind_ at home, and read it, but I wasn't much taken with it. I think what the Guardian article and a lot of the debate in this area lacks is the evolutionary perspective, and that is what Nicholas Humphrey's work focusses on. Nicholas Humphrey imo has contributed more than anyone in recent years to our understanding of human consciousness.

My forthcoming novel _Beautiful Intelligence_ focusses on the consciousness debate and also on AI. My personal feeling is that SF has dealt with AI in a very limited, arid and lazy way. I hoped when I wrote _Beautiful Intelligence_ to present something a little different...


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## Ray McCarthy (Jan 22, 2015)

Stephen Palmer said:


> My personal feeling is that SF has dealt with AI in a very limited, arid and lazy way.


yes. Certainly any written after 1970s is pure fantasy, and simply an extra magical character. Earlier it was ignorance about computers. Touring spoke of AI in a very limited sense and not the sense in SF. Even the Touring Test was never intended by him as a real test of AI. Just an idea. Eliza and later programs showed how gullible and easily fooled most people are.


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## Stephen Palmer (Jan 22, 2015)

Ex Machina... interesting...

I wonder though if the question should not be, "What matters is whether Ava makes a conscious person feel that Ava is conscious, " but, "What matters is whether a conscious person makes Ava feel that a conscious person is conscious."


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## BAYLOR (Jan 26, 2015)

Perhaps this body that we live in is merely an avatar?


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## Ray McCarthy (Jan 26, 2015)

BAYLOR said:


> body that we live in is merely an avatar?


Many religious / faith / spiritual / life-after-death folk would think so. The brain might be an Input/Output interface to our Mind or Soul. Certainly the more they study the brain the more confusing it seems.  Also despite the wish of many biologists and AI researchers we don't seem to be a "meat based" computer. 

Perhaps the body is a "waldo"

I have an open mind on the subject as we lack either evidence or a testable theory.


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## Stephen Palmer (Jan 26, 2015)

Biologists/AI researchers only say "we are not a meat based computer" because almost everybody these days sees humanity - and more - in terms of computers. Let's not forget William of Ockham...


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## Ursa major (Jan 26, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> The brain might be an Input/Output interface to our Mind or Soul.


I wondered this -- though not very seriously -- until my father's Alzheimer's got serious, when it became obvious (to me at least) that the I/O theory is, at best, very simplistic and most likely to be completely wrong.


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## HareBrain (Jan 26, 2015)

I had a similar experience with my dad's dementia. If physical changes in the brain cause such a drastic change in personality, it seems rather unlikely that any part of the personality does not have its cause in the physical brain.

Whether that's true of consciousness itself, in terms of the "observer", we can't know at this stage, since it has no personality or thought. We also can't know whether any other species or thing possesses it, since they can't communicate with us about it.


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## Ray McCarthy (Jan 26, 2015)

Ursa major said:


> father's Alzheimer's got serious, when it became obvious (to me at least)


My mother-in-law's Dementia is very bad, and I had a Great Aunt that  was very bad.
The I/O theory isn't incompatible, actually. But of course it's not a proper theory as there is nothing that it predicts.

The answer is that we don't understand and can't measure Intelligence (IQ and Psychometric tests don't), Creativity, Sentience, Consciousness. 
We have poor flawed tests for self-awareness (such as paint dot and mirror, but cats don't generally regard things in mirrors, video or behind double glazing as "real" due to lack of smell and sound). 
Assumptions about tool making vs brain size etc upset by Caledonian crow. Then unexpectedly the common UK rook, if in a food deprived situation, was found to be as "clever" as the Caledonian crow at spontaneously "making and using tools". There seems to be no correlation between brain size and ability. There was case of French Civil servant (and others) with very little brain and seemed normal.

Dementia and other neurological conditions seem poorly understood.

Language is puzzling too. There is giant gap between any animal capable of a vocabulary and communication and a human child.

A very small number of people disagree with Chomsky's idea of Universal Grammar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky

Did you know there is supposedly NO  culture that doesn't have kissing? (I mean more than "hello" but "Mmm you're nice").

If we ever do meet Aliens wouldn't it be intriguing if they all had bilateral symmetry, four limbs, two eyes on head, similar deep grammar and many aspects of similar body language?
Evolutionists would claim "Convergent Evolution" and "believers"  would say "what did you expect god to do?" It wouldn't "prove" anything. Just be amazing.


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