Theories of consciousness

[gmanyo]

I once saw a really well made html chart with a bunch of different explanations for consciousness and their names, things like the idea that it's just an illusion, or it's a part of matter we haven't figured out yet, etc with little graphics and descriptions for each of them. Can anyone find this? also we can discuss these but i really want to find this thing.

[goDel]

[tontonz1]

at first i thought you were referring to this book

 

which was actually a very nice read. it doesn't really give any answers but it shuts down some common hypotheses (e.g. mind = computer)

[gmanyo]

yes! http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/what-is-consciousness/

[goDel]

Or, that's what Searle tried to do with his Chinese Room experiment.

 

Haven't read the book, but remember I grew tired of his arguments pretty early on in uni. Or rather, all those philosophical debates about consciousness. 90% of it felt like useless personal opinions of people who thought knew shit, but didn't. To a certain extent, cognitive science works better without all the arm chair thinkers and their personal beliefs.

[gmanyo]

I mean, consciousness is at this point entirely philosophy and experience, because we haven't really found much about it. Due to this, it's not particularly useful in many hard scientific applications. In a sense any random guy from the street can know nearly as much about the subject as the most educated of scientists, if they think about it long enough.

[azatoth]

From that chart, I think I am in favor of a mix of cognitivism and epiphenomalism.

[goDel]

Mmmm, no I don't agree. That's kinda like saying that the average Joe on the street knows as much about mental illnesses as someone with a degree. Whether the illness is physical, psychological, or a combination of the two.

 

I agree there are a lot of unknowns, but it takes a scientist to actually make some kind of assertions based on everything we do know. And to validate whether something we think we know, actually means something.

[azatoth]

I mean, consciousness is at this point entirely philosophy and experience, because we haven't really found much about it. Due to this, it's not particularly useful in many hard scientific applications. In a sense any random guy from the street can know nearly as much about the subject as the most educated of scientists, if they think about it long enough.

 

The scientific study of consciousness is a rather new thing, or at least now academics can study it or aspects of it without getting long looks from their colleagues. Perhaps it's the new technology of brain imaging that has allowed a more rigorous and scientific approach to the whole thing.

But it's still a rather tricky subject, since as you say it's an subjective thing and there is a lack of definition on what consciousness is.

[goDel]

I think the irony is that there doesn't need to be a definition of consciousness in order to research how the brain works. (Which smells like epiphenomenalism btw)

[gmanyo]

I'm really not a fan of epiphenomenalism or behaviorism. I understand that people are able to study the brain and figure out parts of it, but it just doesn't seem to make sense to me to say "it's just some accidental side effect". It's too purposeful; and by purposeful I don't mean that it was necessarily made for a purpose*, but that there were logical sequences of events leading up to the creation of it. Behaviorism's "it actually doesn't exist, we just act" is even more dubious to me. I always thought that the best naturalistic explanations were property dualism or maybe quantum consciousness; there is something causing it that exists within matter, but none of the things that we've discovered so far (electricity/electromagnetism, chemical reactions, nuclear reactions, etc) can explain it.

 

Could it be possible that consciousness, or the structural nature of a conscious mind, grants some added advantage above non-conscious lifeforms, and that consciousness structures evolved over time? Being a theist, my beliefs are closest to substance dualism, but I don't see why this is such a bad explanation from a naturalistic viewpoint. I've heard people say that it can't be this way because consciousness only works one way, but I feel like that claim is unfounded.

 

 

*although I do actually believe this

[goDel]

It doesnt make sense to say it's just a side effect. But the opposite claim wouldnt make real sense either, regardless of how we experience our consciousness. Only a scientific approach would be able to make sense of it all. From the philosophical point of view, one of the few who had something useful to say, imo, was Husserl. And more recently, Francesco Varela, where he tried to define doing research on the edge of subjective experience and objectively verifiable phenomena.

[Guest Atom Dowry Firth]

Read this article yesterday. Not sure I'm convinced by what the guy is proposing but there's a good bit about the mathematics of consciousness at the end:

 

http://www.livescience.com/42839-the-universe-is-math.html

 

 

Mathematics of consciousness

Some have described the human brain as the most complex structure in the universe. Indeed, the human mind has made possible all of the great leaps in understanding our world.

Someday, Tegmark said, scientists will probably be able to describe even consciousness using math. (Carl Sagan is quoted as having said, "the brain is a very big place, in a very small space.")

"Consciousness is probably the way information feels when it's being processed in certain, very complicated ways," Tegmark said. He pointed out that many great breakthroughs in physics have involved unifying two things once thought to be separate: energy and matter, space and time, electricity and magnetism. He said he suspects the mind, which is the feeling of a conscious self, will ultimately be unified with the body, which is a collection of moving particles.

But if the brain is just math, does that mean free will doesn't exist, because the movements of particles could be calculated using equations? Not necessarily, he said.

One way to think of it is, if a computer tried to simulate what a person will do, the computation would take at least the same amount of time as performing the action. So some people have suggested defining free will as an inability to predict what one is going to do before the event occurs.

But that doesn't mean humans are powerless. Tegmark concluded his talk with a call to action: "Humans have the power not only to understand our world, but to shape and improve it."

 

[goDel]

That's interesting, but profoundly strange, or wrong even, at the same time. Mathematics is about models. Saying that the universe is a model, is kind of meaningless, I think. What he's actually saying, i believe, is that anything can be modeled into mathematical functions. Which could either mean that mathematics has no limits, or that anything worth modeling could be modeled within the bounds of mathematics.

 

That mathematics, or rather the mathematical language, has bounds was proven quite some time ago by someone with a closely related name. ;)

 

That anything outside the realm of what mathematics can do, whatever that may be, bares no value seems to be highly questionable.

[goDel]

That argument about time and free will is sketchy as well. Simply because a mathematical model isnt constrained by the physiobiological aspects of our brain.

 

So, if a mathematical model of free will would exist, the model would still work similarly, but faster, if it would function without those constraints. And I don't think it's necessary to point out that the human brain is severely constrained by nature.

[cruising for burgers]

[coax]

I find pattern recognition and the general view from the AI people to be the most convincing.

 

A pattern recognizer is a cluster of neurons in the cortex that fire when a certain stimuli comes through the senses. The patterns are structured in a hierarchy, and the higher up you go in the hierarchy, the more 'abstract' the thought becomes because the patterns point to each other, and not necessarily to something physical. Our natural language, and music, basically every sense we have, are patterns that fire in the brain, and the patterns are also hooked into our motor capacity and our body, so as to result in an action in the world. There are also modulators and hormones and other things spread across the brain that give us emotion, but they are specific to humans and animals, but are not necessarily needed for intelligence or consciousness even.

The hierarchy basically starts with directly unfiltered stimuli data like brightness of an object, and the brain represents physical objects with their basic properties first, and then we can create higher abstractions as their own symbols / patterns, and associate / "connect" any symbol to any other symbol. Our words and natural language helps us control and perceive an abstract world, but a word or a notion in a sentence is just like all the other patterns. That's why you can perceive the world without putting words to it, you simply are doing pattern recognizing without the abstractions of language.

 

Now I think it is unlikely that the physical brain is far removed from the process of evolution, that it is order of magnitudes more complex or abstracted from the physical environment it grew up in, and that's why I find it very strange to think that it's not a "simple" organ. If we can in some way find the patterns of the mental aspect directly physical in the brain, like indirectly or directly the physical neurons shape how the mind is conscious, then maybe we can find some solution to "the hard problem", or qualia etc. We already know that different parts of the brain activate upon specific stimuli and thoughts, so I imagine we need to further refine how we image that. Maybe the brain is a kind of feedback loop extension of the more basic nervous system ability to filter and send inputs and outputs based on a reaction in the senses, and that there evolved some internal control mechanism as it was better adapted than a mere instinctual nervous system. I can go on about this, but I'm going to stop. I also want to say quantum consciousness is for the most part nonsense. It is not scientific nor is it an explanation. We are unable to draw any conclusion or empirical evidence from the quantum to the macroscopic world.

[zkom]

From that chart I'd go with "High Order Theory". The ability to observe your own thought processes gave evolutionary advantage because it made higher order abstraction possible. Things like language, mathematics, politics, etc.

 

But I'm a little bit partial to the pan psychism also. To me individuality is just an illusion which was also created by evolution but in reality there's no strict boundaries between individual beings and the rest of the universe. Also higher order structures like social structures might be self conscious also, so the individual human minds would be parts to them the same way brain cells make up the mind. And maybe lower order structures too? Like part of your subconscious is thinking it's an individual mind too?

 

Free will is problematic to say the least, but I'd bet it's just an illusion and is required for the self-consciousness to work. Also I'd say mathematics is just a human construction. It's more like a map of the reality than the actual terrain.

 

I'm waiting for a chance to mix Kurt Gödel into this..

[goDel]

You just have to look at that Damasio talk Micheal Jackson posted. (second half is more interesting... he's a slow starter).

 

Thanks for posting MJ!

 

edit: @coax

[coax]

Oh! Great video, watching it now.

[cruising for burgers]

here's a nice playlist:
http://www.ted.com/playlists/1/how_does_my_brain_work.html

[Ragnar]

i believe consciousness is structured exactly like ullilillilia's website

[Ragnar]

or the waveform of a 4 billion year Paulstretched amen break

[sergeantk]

idm as fuck

[gmanyo]

Shortened point that I'm replying to by coax for lazy people:

Consciousness could be highly abstracted hierarchical structures of neurons

 

 

I find pattern recognition and the general view from the AI people to be the most convincing.

 

A pattern recognizer is a cluster of neurons in the cortex that fire when a certain stimuli comes through the senses. The patterns are structured in a hierarchy, and the higher up you go in the hierarchy, the more 'abstract' the thought becomes because the patterns point to each other, and not necessarily to something physical. Our natural language, and music, basically every sense we have, are patterns that fire in the brain, and the patterns are also hooked into our motor capacity and our body, so as to result in an action in the world. There are also modulators and hormones and other things spread across the brain that give us emotion, but they are specific to humans and animals, but are not necessarily needed for intelligence or consciousness even.

The hierarchy basically starts with directly unfiltered stimuli data like brightness of an object, and the brain represents physical objects with their basic properties first, and then we can create higher abstractions as their own symbols / patterns, and associate / "connect" any symbol to any other symbol. Our words and natural language helps us control and perceive an abstract world, but a word or a notion in a sentence is just like all the other patterns. That's why you can perceive the world without putting words to it, you simply are doing pattern recognizing without the abstractions of language.

 

Now I think it is unlikely that the physical brain is far removed from the process of evolution, that it is order of magnitudes more complex or abstracted from the physical environment it grew up in, and that's why I find it very strange to think that it's not a "simple" organ. If we can in some way find the patterns of the mental aspect directly physical in the brain, like indirectly or directly the physical neurons shape how the mind is conscious, then maybe we can find some solution to "the hard problem", or qualia etc. We already know that different parts of the brain activate upon specific stimuli and thoughts, so I imagine we need to further refine how we image that. Maybe the brain is a kind of feedback loop extension of the more basic nervous system ability to filter and send inputs and outputs based on a reaction in the senses, and that there evolved some internal control mechanism as it was better adapted than a mere instinctual nervous system. I can go on about this, but I'm going to stop. I also want to say quantum consciousness is for the most part nonsense. It is not scientific nor is it an explanation. We are unable to draw any conclusion or empirical evidence from the quantum to the macroscopic world.

 

This is an interesting idea, but to me it's like trying to explain how an electric motor works without understanding electricity. Yes, you can talk about how the central shaft spins around, or how a compression system works, and about all the parts in a motor, even a complex motor, but until you understand electricity you don't know how it works. I think the best we can say is that how consciousness plays out is linked to the structures of neurons, but we still don't have the key component to understanding it, the thing that makes consciousness consciousness. Nothing we've discovered so far can adequately explain it, because electric charges and stuff bumping into other stuff should not make consciousness, even if its super complicated.* We've got one part of the equation, the structures and everything, but we're missing a key component. So I also disagree with the idea that social structures can be conscious, as mokz mentioned.

 

This is why I think that we can't currently build a conscious robot, regardless of what Asimov thinks. It might, in theory, be possible to build something with consciousness, but we aren't going to inadvertently put consciousness into a robot by making it more complicated. I'm a computer science major, and I know for a fact that no matter how hard you try to make a program conscious, it's still just going to be a bunch of charges flipping on a circuit board.*

 

I don't think that being self-conscious is necessary for consciousness, but I think that the "self" is consciousness. You can have a self in that sense without being aware of it, for example if one was severely mentally handicapped. However, consciousness is definitely necessary for self-consciousness because to be conscious of the self you have to have consciousness and thus, a self. I think it's a bit of a mix of definitions in the english language that being conscious of something is the same word as just being conscious, but you do have to be conscious to be conscious of something.

 

Watching the video now, about reference points, which is a really good point. I think to say that any one thing is the same from moment to moment or even that any single thing is distinct in any useful way requires consciousness, otherwise everything might as well be the same (though perhaps I'm treading too close to solipsism here).

 

*It could be useful here to look into computer science theory. No matter how complicated you make a program or an electrical circuit, it can be defined the exact same way as even the most basic of programs. All computer science stuff can be reduced to what are called "languages", which can completely define any computer program. It's essentially just extremely long, often infinite, lists of all the possible executions of any given program. There is absolutely no reason why a bigger language might somehow be conscious in execution if a smaller language is not.