How is it not obvious? Awareness can most certainly be tested for... I prefer the "sharp stick in the eye" test. It requires minimal equipment and the results can be observed by an amateur.
RE your remark: "... I saw no proposal behind the physical *mechanism* of awareness..."
That's what scientific research is for. Just because the research hasn't been done, in this case largely because no one is looking in the right place and the technology doesn't exist yet, is no reason to lurch into a hypothesis like Panpsychism, that, as you'll notice, is also lacking in *mechanism* and is, additionally *completely untestable*.
My hypothesis, ".. that consciousness is equivalent to a pattern of activation and connectivity involving a brainstem neuronal cluster (and/or other related cells), such that a conscious feeling IS that structure" fits in well with the brainstem consciousness hypothesis. Contrasted with your own initial proposal, that "... awareness might be an inherent property of matter", my physical consciousness hypothesis seems perfectly reasonable and testable, given the development of the necessary technology. Sort of like gravity waves, that had to await the development of laser technology before they could be detected.
Yes, as you noticed, "... awareness is based in the older section of the brain, and not the newer cortex..." seems like an evolutionary no-brainer. And if consciousness developed as a brainstem function, it's extremely unlikely that evolution would favor an additional brain structure developing consciousness because, like developing a second set of lungs, it's more in keeping with the style of evolution for the brainstem to evolve viable representations of additional sensory tracks. The massively parallel processing cortex then evolved (from a bit of early cortex-like brainstem tissue) to resolve more complex, predictive representations -- as pre-conscious "images" -- that are passed back to the brainstem for integration into it's more limited "display".
Makes a lot of sense, I believe, and Merker's experimental and observational evidence is very supportive. When you've absorbed Merker and Damasio, maybe you can email me at last for "Einstein's Breadcrumbs" and we can move our conversations out of slashdot's unread bit bucket into something more useful.
I'm pretty sure none of my posts ever get read -- they're all still at '1', mostly, I suspect because I'm always late to the commenting party.
Note the evidence cited. Try some Damasio too: "The Feeling of What Happens" is most interesting, but you should be able to locate some articles of his about brainstem consciousness. Here's one:
The Philosophers of Consciousness have decided that consciousness is created by the cortex, a completely evidence-free proposition... (philosophy and evidence don't get along, hence Hawking's remark that, "Philosophy is dead.") Contrast that gaseous guess with the brainstem (the "reptilian brain") consciousness hypothesis that is supported by a great deal of evolutionary, experimental, and observational evidence.
Cortical consciousness hypotheses have created all sorts of confusion and nonsense "problems," like "back-dating", for instance, the fact that a cortical stimulation of a touch done prior to a physical touch is nevertheless experienced *after* the physical touch. Duh! Look at the wiring - everything that happens to and within the body reaches the brainstem first.
Merker reasonably proposes that the brainstem complex creates the relatively low bandwidth conscious experience and the cortex (which is suggestively "activated" by the brainstem), with its vast parallel processing elaborates the content of consciousness in a way specific to a particular species. In my hypothesis, resolved cortical pre-conscious "images" are transmitted to the brainstem for "display".
Of course, almost all of consciousness research and funding are focused on the cortex, which is always illustrated with numerous "blinkenlights" and is probably shiny too...;-) Your cited "manipulate individual neurons" is one example - those are cortical neurons. So it may be awhile before brainstem consciousness is examined with the same rigor and intensity. My own theory is that consciousness is equivalent to a pattern of activation and connectivity involving a brainstem neuronal cluster (and/or other related cells), such that a conscious feeling IS that structure. In that view, consciousness remains completely physical - there's nothing else to it - so it'll likely take a nanotechnological level of examination (and a singular lapse of ethics) to see if a feeling of the color blue might be changed to a feeling of the color red with a tiny brainstem tweak..
Just because we haven't yet achieved that level of experimental capability is no reason to turn to religious/spiritual suggestions like Panpsychism, which seems to lead to a belief in a consciousness that's some ghostly infinity. Don't give up on science so easily... it's the best thing humanity has going for itself. Aside from empathy.
I have a whole shelf full of books I've read about consciousness and neuroscience. NOTHING? I've spent weeks of my life reading NOTHING?
I beg to disagree... note that the word 'science' is embedded in the word 'neuroscience'. The "philosophers" of consciousness are by and large full of shiite, but that's to be expected from vocabulary wranglers. For some science and an evidence-based approach, google Bjorn Merker's work for instance.
Actually, Immerman, your entire position seems very "iffy" ---> If this, if that.
"If we were telepathic...", "If it's a fundamental property...", "Suppose for one whimsical moment...", "We have no idea if 'feelings' are also something that atoms have", etc. Of the rock, you correctly state, "we would have no way to recognize its awareness, but that would not make it any less aware"...
Just what is it that allows us to recognize awareness in anything? What is it that allows us to rule it out?
You correctly said, "... we cannot make sound extrapolations from a position of ignorance," but that seems to be what you're doing and that's exactly what Panpsychists are doing. If "we can't know, we can't tell, we have no way to communicate with a rock...", then what's the point of your argument?
No, a rock has no eyes and no vocal ability. Like I said, though, "Just stick Data with a sharp stick in the eye"... Commander Data isn't completely deprived of android-specific sensory data like Ensign Rock is, and Data even has a computational analog of human eyes -- a place to put your sharp stick. So what happens in Data's case? Does Its response, whatever it is, inform us of Data's consciousness? Fer damn sure It won't say "Ow!". Data cannot "feel"... the very definition of sentience! Nobody bothers to look it up.
I'm trying to understand what our science tells us. Perhaps we have a language difficulty here. Please define 'consciousness' in a way conformant with neuroscience. If it's not a science-based definition, then how can we have any discussion about consciousness at all? This is not a religious topic.
Go brave, Immerman! Email me and I'll send you "Einstein's Breadcrumbs"...
Click on the PDF download on that page. Turns out physics is moving right along with GR-QFT reconciliation, although I have no idea how many are paying attention. Dr. Mark Stuckey, et al, have a book due out soon, "Beyond the Dynamical Universe", that I've been reading the Kindle version of... the physics is great, but McDevitt's "neutral monism" philosophy is ridiculous (not a Philosophy precedent, by any means). Just Google-Scholar "Stuckey Silberstein" for heaps and gobs of papers.
Of course, neither STR nor QFT explain a perceived "now"... what's needed for an explanation requires a cross-discipline investigation... physics + neuroscience. All 100% science, no emotive urges anywhere.
Your "known phenomenon" is essentially Presentism, which is most compelling until you realize that the Block Universe of STR via RoS (Stuckey's Blockworld) has no flowing present time, no "now" and certainly no dynamical behavior at all. It seems a minor logical exercise to note that, if something doesn't exist in the universe, it must be an artifact of consciousness, so both the illusion of a flowing present time and the feeling of "now" are rooted in the stream of consciousness. Note that the illusion and the reality feel exactly the same.
"Einstein's Breadcrumbs" (EB) specifically addresses this alternative:
"Indeed, the reality of our experience of the flow of consciousness and the perception of change within that flow perfectly explain the illusory feeling of the flow of time as well as explaining its stubborn persistence. Coupled with the illusion of “now” it's obvious why the illusory feeling of the flow of time gives rise to a belief in Presentism – Presentism is the way it feels. Note, however, that an actual, biological feeling of flowing time is impossible because we cannot feel it – we have no sensory inputs attuned to flowing time, a most reasonable arrangement considering that it doesn't exist."
The "now", of course, is simply a feeling of the immediacy of conscious experience. I don't currently have EB posted somewhere that I can provide you a link to... the "ERLTalk @ outlook.com" email allows me to send you a PDF copy. I believe you'd benefit from reading it, so please reconsider your email reluctance -- lots of substantiating quotations from physicists and sources identified, as well as a wealth of explanation that's simply impossible to post. EB is 25 pages long, including footnotes. I'd much enjoy and surely benefit from your thoughts about it.
Consciousness in the Block Universe also looks very much like a most impressive simulation architecture and I've discussed that idea in a separate section. I hope to see your email... I won't do anything but email you the EB PDF. Should you decide to exchange views after reading EB, simply let me know and we could continue emailing.
BTW, email me at ERLTalk @ outlook.com, sans spaces. I'll send you my paper "Einstein's Breadcrumbs" expanding on Einstein's hypothesis about what he called "the eternity of life". Turns out that, in the block universe, you are immortal.
Actually, we *do* have an idea that rocks and atoms don't have feelings because they don't have neurons. Panpsychism is obviously equivocating the definition of the word "consciousness". This is scientific subject matter, not emotional. And, of course, You could know that a rock is conscious if you poke it in the eye with a sharp stick and the rock says, "Ow!"...;-)
Your usage of the word consciousness in extending it to plants is another equivocation, and unnecessary too, because what you are describing is already scientifically referred to as a "tropism"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
I agree that we can't make "extrapolations from a position of ignorance", so your evidence-free Panpsychism is an extrapolation too far. Try this question instead: Is Star Trek's Commander Data conscious?
Nope. Data doesn't have neurons. Another one of the definitional characteristics of consciousness is that it's internal and ineffable and so it's the presence of neuronal networks and clusters, as well as upwards of 90% DNA in common that allows us to infer that non-human animals like your dog and your pet raven are conscious. Those valid inference ingredients are not applicable to Commander Data so, no matter what Data claims (and he's not at all sentient), we can only infer that It is a sophisticated emulation of human behaviors.
Just stick Data with a sharp stick in the eye...;-)
Howdy iggymanz! I note your slashdot user number is much earlier than mine. I’m 72 you might be one of the ancients;-)
“Each observer has a “now”, you write, and you’re exactly correct! Because there’s no “now” in the universe or in the laws of physics, the “now” must be in your head, just like you say. It’s subjective. Now is a “feeling”, not a time.
The block universe is an implication of the Relativity of Simultaneity (RoS) of relativity physics (STR), the most repeatedly confirmed theory ever, I believe. The recent detection of gravity waves is the latest confirmation. Gravity waves propagate through 4-dimensional spacetime, of course, not 3-dimensional “space”. To reclaim your free will, your Newtonian flowing present time and your actual real “now”, all you need to do is invalidate the Special Theory of Relativity. Demonstrating that the speed of light is not a maximum throughout the universe would work, but it’s a bit of a rough go, I expect. Check out “Time Reborn” by physicist Lee Smolin he really really misses his free will but is having a lot of difficulty reclaiming it.
Please do the slashdot click to find all of my posts (Me be "crashdot") and you’ll see my earlier long reply to Stormy Dragon’s initial post. Email me at ERLTalk @ outlook.com (no spaces of course) and I’ll email you back my PDF called “Einstein’s Breadcrumbs” which, among many other things, points you to reference materials that can confirm my remarks about “now”. I’d enjoy a continuing conversation on these topics.
Most importantly (and it’s what the ERL hypothesis is about, the Eternal Re-experiencing of Life), you are immortal! That conclusion is a direct implication of the persistence of consciousness in the block universe. And the thought of your immortality might help you make it through the week;-) Please email – let’s exchange views.
Consciousness is a *feeling*. See Damasio's "The Feeling of What Happens". Consciousness is something neurons do -- it's definitional in fact: every known instance of consciousness is biological and requires collections of neurons. Nothing lacking neurons can be conscious. You'd need another word.
A flowing present time throughout the universe, ala Newton, does not exist. No one has ever even proposed an experiment to verify that it exists. The "stream of consciousness" gives rise to our illusion of a flowing present time. The feeling of "now" is equally and illusion, an artifact of the immediacy of conscious feeling. There is no "now" in the universe or the laws of physics.
Time is what clocks measure. Spacetime, per the relativity physics you believe in (you use a GPS?) is three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension and everything we consider past and present -- absolutely everything! -- exists. Einstein, Minkowski... check it out!
We never stop experiencing our lives.. over and over, eternally. Einstein called it "the eternity of life".
Everything in the Block Universe persists, or perdures, eternally. There is no "actual real present moment". The feeling of a "now" is an artifact of consciousness. All of the moments of everyone's life are "just there" in your 4-dimensional spacetime "self", referred to as a "worldtube".
There is no Newtonian flowing present time in the universe. Instead, your consciousness "flows"... it's called the stream of consciousness. It's the stream of consciousness in a static and unchanging spacetime that gives rise to the illusion if a flowing time. It's the immediacy of conscious experience that feels like a "now".
These aren't mere fringe whack opinions. Check out Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, the associated Relativity of Simultaneity, and Minkowski spacetime for the source materials. And try not to be diverted by the many ridiculous philosophical notions about what consciousness is. Consciousness is a feeling! Check out Damasio's "The Feeling of What Happens"...
Unfortunately, there is no "now" in the universe, or in the laws of physics. No flowing Newtonian present time either. Spacetime is unchanging... it's called the Block Universe.
So delighted to read your post. I hope you check back occasionally and find my post. What follows is from an email I sent to physicist Mark Stuckey et al, of "Relational BlockWorld" RBW fame. I've been researching the issues of consciousness in the block universe for about three years now, an issue that the Philosophers and Physicists I've written wish to avoid considering. My conclusions are in my paper, "Einstein's Breadcrumbs" which I'd be happy to email you... email me at -- ERLTalk @ outlook.com -- I'd love to exchange thoughts. Apologies for the length.
=========
I would like to call your attention to an unrealized, but likely implication of the persistence of consciousness in the block universe, namely the hypothesis that each of us eternally re-experiences our lifetime. I credit Einstein with the only statements that have been made regarding that proposal. I refer to his handful of suggestive quotations as “Einstein’s Breadcrumbs” (EB) because, taken together, they indicate that Einstein believed in what he termed “the eternity of life.” I have formalized his hypothesis as The Eternal Re-experiencing of Life (ERL).
Here are the Einstein quotations for your consideration:
1. “Enough for me is the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality...” 2. “It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity..." 3. "I believe the mind is immortal in the same sense as the body for it is difficult to doubt that the capacity to build living bodies and consciousness is connected with matter.” 4. “That [death] means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics...”, from the famous Besso quote.
The essence of the ERL hypothesis is this, quoted from EB:
“We don't eventually experience our death and then restart another iteration of our life experience at conception. Rather, each of our lives is like a recording in spacetime, played back continuously by our brains from every point in the recording. All of our conscious moments, all of our “nows” participate in the “flow of consciousness,” as discussed in the “Stubbornly Persistent Illusion” section further on, so that no conscious moment is experienced separate from that flow, called the “stream of consciousness” since the days of William James.
Each conscious moment, then, is a fleeting component of a stream of consciousness. When we envision a series of our conscious moments, understanding each moment as part of an ongoing flow, we can see the moments in our conscious lives as a series of streams of consciousness, like continuously moving beads strung together one after another on an endlessly refreshed fixed-length string. Your stream of consciousness as you read this description is pursued by streams you've already experienced and is following the streams in your future that you've yet to discover. From your point of view, the pursuing streams are repeating the experiencing you've left behind and your current experience would be seen as a re-experiencing from the point of view of the streams ahead of you on the timeline. Given this perspective, because all of those streams are “you” (albeit the you as you exist at multiple unique spacetime co-ordinates), the experiencing of any of your conscious moments can be understood as a re-experiencing.
This re-experiencing of your life is not a recurrence, as in Nietzche's Eternal Recurrence, because to recur is to happen over again. But nothing happens in the BU and that includes your life. Your life does not happen and, indeed, has not happened even once – it has not happened at all! Obviously, then, ERL does not mean that our lives happen over and over eternally. Our lives are "just there" in the BU – as static and unch
I have an Alcatel with an enabled FM radio chip. The audio jack is used for an antenna, usually provided by the wire on the earbuds/headphones you have plugged in. However I can also use an male-male standard audio cable in the jack as an antenna while directing the audio stream to a Bluetooth speaker.
So the removal of the audio jack removes this radio functionality as well as all of the other uses that have been noted.
What constitutes a simulation? Perhaps our imaginations are being limited by the nature our nascent and primitive computer experience.
Try this "simulation" scenario on:
Per Einstein's Relativity Physics (STR, the Special Theory of Relativity), which is certainly settled physics at this more-than-a-century-removed point, we live in a Spacetime of three dimensions of space and one temporal dimension, often called Minkowski Spacetime. Spacetime is also referred to as the Block Universe, in which everything exists (or perdures to use the philosophical terminology). There is no flowing time - time does not exist. Everything we consider "past" and "future" is there - it's all there in spacetime. Everything. Nothing changes. Nothing can change in spacetime.
Most physicists believe in the reality of the Block Universe (BU) but apparently aren't inclined to think or write about it. Lee Smolin now hates it - see his "Time Reborn" - but his book provides an instructive overview of the physics. Dr. Smolin is agitated about the non-existence of free will, the ever-silly naivety, but, in fact, the obvious immediate implication of the BU containing conscious beings is that we all re-experience our lives (these very same lives we're living) repeatedly and eternally (or until spacetime ceases to exist). I've acronym'd that hypothesis as ERL - the Eternal Re-experiencing of Life. Interestingly, Einstein seems to have believed in ERL, which he referred to as the "Mystery of the Eternity of Life".
The BU containing conscious organisms presents us with a fascinating architecture for a Virtual Reality... our Real Reality:
Briefly, consider the unchanging BU as The Data... talk about Big Data! Now consider that consciousness is a "feeling", a meta-feeling if you like, but it's a biologically produced characteristic of a system of "meatware" of organic construction. Consciousness "flows" - it's the "movie-in-the-brain" per neuroscientist Antonio Damasio - the "flowing" experience we mistake for a "flow of time" (which doesn't exist in the BU). Our sense of "now" is not a sense of a time, by the way, but is rather a default charasteristic of conscious experience - all of our conscious experiences happen "now" and all of our "nows" are like frames in the "movie-in-the-brain".
Some of the fixed events in fixed spacetime act as sensations - the inputs to our body-shaped system of meat electronics. Some as yet undetermined brain structure, most likely the brainstem (the "reptilian brain"), creates consciousness from this input as an output - a feeling that is an analog "reality" simulation, the feeling of being centered in a world. The brain is the VR Headgear, producing the continuous, flowing simulation of a reality that is the experiencing of our lives. Significantly, our subjective VR experience of reality is nothing at all like the external world - it is completely different from The Data. In spacetime there is no sound, no color, no... (add an endless list of the elements of our conscious experience to complete this qualia list).
So there you have it. The Block Universe is not a simulation as we currently conceive one, but the direct implication that it was created or constructed in its entirety as an implementation of eternal conscious experience is a fascinating one. You likely believe this must be case... if you believe in the validity of Relativity Physics (do you use your GPS much?) and believe that the brain creates consciousness (regardless of what you believe consciousness to be) then you believe in ERL, a hypothesis I am so far unable to falsify.
We don't understand what human intelligence is or how it works, that's why. Here's my $.02:
The human brain is a Story Engine. Everything we think and everything we know is a story - we perceive and learn in story form. Memories are stored and retrieved as stories.
The simplest story form is the metaphor. Metaphors rooted in our bodily existence are the basis of individual learning (see "Philosophy of the Flesh"). Speech, writing, mathematics, science, art, and music encode our human stories. All of human experience - all encoded and manipulated as stories!
What we call Intelligence is pattern matching of stories within and across human interest domains... see any IQ test for confirmation. Creativity itself derives from pattern matching, very often across knowledge and experience domains.
If we wish to create a human-like Intelligence, we must create a human-like Story Engine. As far as I can tell, no one taking this approach.
I have only recently begun considering this hypothesis of Story as Intelligence, but it seems plausible on many levels. I suspect Story functionality is what distinguishes human brain functionality from that of closely related primates. I'd appreciate hearing other's thoughts on the hypothesis and its applicability to the creation of AI.
I've often wondered about encoding the fundamental motivations for an AI. Perhaps, as with ourselves, the prime directive might simply be to keep the story unfolding.
Slashdot Mirror
How is it not obvious? Awareness can most certainly be tested for ... I prefer the "sharp stick in the eye" test. It requires minimal equipment and the results can be observed by an amateur.
RE your remark: "... I saw no proposal behind the physical *mechanism* of awareness ..."
That's what scientific research is for. Just because the research hasn't been done, in this case largely because no one is looking in the right place and the technology doesn't exist yet, is no reason to lurch into a hypothesis like Panpsychism, that, as you'll notice, is also lacking in *mechanism* and is, additionally *completely untestable*.
My hypothesis, ".. that consciousness is equivalent to a pattern of activation and connectivity involving a brainstem neuronal cluster (and/or other related cells), such that a conscious feeling IS that structure" fits in well with the brainstem consciousness hypothesis. Contrasted with your own initial proposal, that " ... awareness might be an inherent property of matter", my physical consciousness hypothesis seems perfectly reasonable and testable, given the development of the necessary technology. Sort of like gravity waves, that had to await the development of laser technology before they could be detected.
Yes, as you noticed, "... awareness is based in the older section of the brain, and not the newer cortex ..." seems like an evolutionary no-brainer. And if consciousness developed as a brainstem function, it's extremely unlikely that evolution would favor an additional brain structure developing consciousness because, like developing a second set of lungs, it's more in keeping with the style of evolution for the brainstem to evolve viable representations of additional sensory tracks. The massively parallel processing cortex then evolved (from a bit of early cortex-like brainstem tissue) to resolve more complex, predictive representations -- as pre-conscious "images" -- that are passed back to the brainstem for integration into it's more limited "display".
Makes a lot of sense, I believe, and Merker's experimental and observational evidence is very supportive. When you've absorbed Merker and Damasio, maybe you can email me at last for "Einstein's Breadcrumbs" and we can move our conversations out of slashdot's unread bit bucket into something more useful.
I'm pretty sure none of my posts ever get read -- they're all still at '1', mostly, I suspect because I'm always late to the commenting party.
Enjoy!
Here's a link to Merker's "Consciousness without a cerebral cortex"
http://www.summer12.isc.uqam.c...
Note the evidence cited. Try some Damasio too: "The Feeling of What Happens" is most interesting, but you should be able to locate some articles of his about brainstem consciousness. Here's one:
http://www.federaljack.com/ebo...
The Philosophers of Consciousness have decided that consciousness is created by the cortex, a completely evidence-free proposition ... (philosophy and evidence don't get along, hence Hawking's remark that, "Philosophy is dead.") Contrast that gaseous guess with the brainstem (the "reptilian brain") consciousness hypothesis that is supported by a great deal of evolutionary, experimental, and observational evidence.
Cortical consciousness hypotheses have created all sorts of confusion and nonsense "problems," like "back-dating", for instance, the fact that a cortical stimulation of a touch done prior to a physical touch is nevertheless experienced *after* the physical touch. Duh! Look at the wiring - everything that happens to and within the body reaches the brainstem first.
Merker reasonably proposes that the brainstem complex creates the relatively low bandwidth conscious experience and the cortex (which is suggestively "activated" by the brainstem), with its vast parallel processing elaborates the content of consciousness in a way specific to a particular species. In my hypothesis, resolved cortical pre-conscious "images" are transmitted to the brainstem for "display".
Of course, almost all of consciousness research and funding are focused on the cortex, which is always illustrated with numerous "blinkenlights" and is probably shiny too ... ;-) Your cited "manipulate individual neurons" is one example - those are cortical neurons. So it may be awhile before brainstem consciousness is examined with the same rigor and intensity. My own theory is that consciousness is equivalent to a pattern of activation and connectivity involving a brainstem neuronal cluster (and/or other related cells), such that a conscious feeling IS that structure. In that view, consciousness remains completely physical - there's nothing else to it - so it'll likely take a nanotechnological level of examination (and a singular lapse of ethics) to see if a feeling of the color blue might be changed to a feeling of the color red with a tiny brainstem tweak..
Just because we haven't yet achieved that level of experimental capability is no reason to turn to religious/spiritual suggestions like Panpsychism, which seems to lead to a belief in a consciousness that's some ghostly infinity. Don't give up on science so easily ... it's the best thing humanity has going for itself. Aside from empathy.
I have a whole shelf full of books I've read about consciousness and neuroscience. NOTHING? I've spent weeks of my life reading NOTHING?
I beg to disagree ... note that the word 'science' is embedded in the word 'neuroscience'. The "philosophers" of consciousness are by and large full of shiite, but that's to be expected from vocabulary wranglers. For some science and an evidence-based approach, google Bjorn Merker's work for instance.
Actually, Immerman, your entire position seems very "iffy" ---> If this, if that.
"If we were telepathic ...", "If it's a fundamental property ...", "Suppose for one whimsical moment ...", "We have no idea if 'feelings' are also something that atoms have", etc. Of the rock, you correctly state, "we would have no way to recognize its awareness, but that would not make it any less aware" ...
Just what is it that allows us to recognize awareness in anything? What is it that allows us to rule it out?
You correctly said, "... we cannot make sound extrapolations from a position of ignorance," but that seems to be what you're doing and that's exactly what Panpsychists are doing. If "we can't know, we can't tell, we have no way to communicate with a rock ...", then what's the point of your argument?
No, a rock has no eyes and no vocal ability. Like I said, though, "Just stick Data with a sharp stick in the eye" ... Commander Data isn't completely deprived of android-specific sensory data like Ensign Rock is, and Data even has a computational analog of human eyes -- a place to put your sharp stick. So what happens in Data's case? Does Its response, whatever it is, inform us of Data's consciousness? Fer damn sure It won't say "Ow!". Data cannot "feel" ... the very definition of sentience! Nobody bothers to look it up.
I'm trying to understand what our science tells us. Perhaps we have a language difficulty here. Please define 'consciousness' in a way conformant with neuroscience. If it's not a science-based definition, then how can we have any discussion about consciousness at all? This is not a religious topic.
Go brave, Immerman! Email me and I'll send you "Einstein's Breadcrumbs" ...
Yo! ... iggymanz! Physics degree, eh? You might enjoy this:
http://philsci-archive.pitt.ed...
Click on the PDF download on that page. Turns out physics is moving right along with GR-QFT reconciliation, although I have no idea how many are paying attention. Dr. Mark Stuckey, et al, have a book due out soon, "Beyond the Dynamical Universe", that I've been reading the Kindle version of ... the physics is great, but McDevitt's "neutral monism" philosophy is ridiculous (not a Philosophy precedent, by any means). Just Google-Scholar "Stuckey Silberstein" for heaps and gobs of papers.
Of course, neither STR nor QFT explain a perceived "now" ... what's needed for an explanation requires a cross-discipline investigation ... physics + neuroscience. All 100% science, no emotive urges anywhere.
Your "known phenomenon" is essentially Presentism, which is most compelling until you realize that the Block Universe of STR via RoS (Stuckey's Blockworld) has no flowing present time, no "now" and certainly no dynamical behavior at all. It seems a minor logical exercise to note that, if something doesn't exist in the universe, it must be an artifact of consciousness, so both the illusion of a flowing present time and the feeling of "now" are rooted in the stream of consciousness. Note that the illusion and the reality feel exactly the same.
"Einstein's Breadcrumbs" (EB) specifically addresses this alternative:
"Indeed, the reality of our experience of the flow of consciousness and the perception of change within that flow perfectly explain the illusory feeling of the flow of time as well as explaining its stubborn persistence. Coupled with the illusion of “now” it's obvious why the illusory feeling of the flow of time gives rise to a belief in Presentism – Presentism is the way it feels. Note, however, that an actual, biological feeling of flowing time is impossible because we cannot feel it – we have no sensory inputs attuned to flowing time, a most reasonable arrangement considering that it doesn't exist."
The "now", of course, is simply a feeling of the immediacy of conscious experience. I don't currently have EB posted somewhere that I can provide you a link to ... the "ERLTalk @ outlook.com" email allows me to send you a PDF copy. I believe you'd benefit from reading it, so please reconsider your email reluctance -- lots of substantiating quotations from physicists and sources identified, as well as a wealth of explanation that's simply impossible to post. EB is 25 pages long, including footnotes. I'd much enjoy and surely benefit from your thoughts about it.
Consciousness in the Block Universe also looks very much like a most impressive simulation architecture and I've discussed that idea in a separate section. I hope to see your email ... I won't do anything but email you the EB PDF. Should you decide to exchange views after reading EB, simply let me know and we could continue emailing.
Just like here:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.o... [semanticscholar.org]
BTW, email me at ERLTalk @ outlook.com, sans spaces. I'll send you my paper "Einstein's Breadcrumbs" expanding on Einstein's hypothesis about what he called "the eternity of life". Turns out that, in the block universe, you are immortal.
Cheers!
Take a look at this:
"The Relational Blockworld Interpretation of Non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics"
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.o...
Happy learning! ;-)
Not any more:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...
"Please describe an objective repeatable test that a "conscious" entity would pass, but an entity without "consciousness" would fail":
Step 1: Sure! Stick another person in the eye with a sharp stick. Notice their response.
Step 2: Stick Commander Data in the eye with a sharp stick. Notice its response.
Does an android qualify as an "entity"?
Yo! Immerman! Thanks for your perspective ...
Actually, we *do* have an idea that rocks and atoms don't have feelings because they don't have neurons. Panpsychism is obviously equivocating the definition of the word "consciousness". This is scientific subject matter, not emotional. And, of course, You could know that a rock is conscious if you poke it in the eye with a sharp stick and the rock says, "Ow!" ... ;-)
Your usage of the word consciousness in extending it to plants is another equivocation, and unnecessary too, because what you are describing is already scientifically referred to as a "tropism" ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
I agree that we can't make "extrapolations from a position of ignorance", so your evidence-free Panpsychism is an extrapolation too far. Try this question instead: Is Star Trek's Commander Data conscious?
Nope. Data doesn't have neurons. Another one of the definitional characteristics of consciousness is that it's internal and ineffable and so it's the presence of neuronal networks and clusters, as well as upwards of 90% DNA in common that allows us to infer that non-human animals like your dog and your pet raven are conscious. Those valid inference ingredients are not applicable to Commander Data so, no matter what Data claims (and he's not at all sentient), we can only infer that It is a sophisticated emulation of human behaviors.
Just stick Data with a sharp stick in the eye ... ;-)
Howdy iggymanz! I note your slashdot user number is much earlier than mine. I’m 72 you might be one of the ancients ;-)
“Each observer has a “now”, you write, and you’re exactly correct! Because there’s no “now” in the universe or in the laws of physics, the “now” must be in your head, just like you say. It’s subjective. Now is a “feeling”, not a time.
The block universe is an implication of the Relativity of Simultaneity (RoS) of relativity physics (STR), the most repeatedly confirmed theory ever, I believe. The recent detection of gravity waves is the latest confirmation. Gravity waves propagate through 4-dimensional spacetime, of course, not 3-dimensional “space”. To reclaim your free will, your Newtonian flowing present time and your actual real “now”, all you need to do is invalidate the Special Theory of Relativity. Demonstrating that the speed of light is not a maximum throughout the universe would work, but it’s a bit of a rough go, I expect. Check out “Time Reborn” by physicist Lee Smolin he really really misses his free will but is having a lot of difficulty reclaiming it.
Please do the slashdot click to find all of my posts (Me be "crashdot") and you’ll see my earlier long reply to Stormy Dragon’s initial post. Email me at ERLTalk @ outlook.com (no spaces of course) and I’ll email you back my PDF called “Einstein’s Breadcrumbs” which, among many other things, points you to reference materials that can confirm my remarks about “now”. I’d enjoy a continuing conversation on these topics.
Most importantly (and it’s what the ERL hypothesis is about, the Eternal Re-experiencing of Life), you are immortal! That conclusion is a direct implication of the persistence of consciousness in the block universe. And the thought of your immortality might help you make it through the week ;-) Please email – let’s exchange views.
Consciousness is a *feeling*. See Damasio's "The Feeling of What Happens". Consciousness is something neurons do -- it's definitional in fact: every known instance of consciousness is biological and requires collections of neurons. Nothing lacking neurons can be conscious. You'd need another word.
Causally connected is irrelevant. Lightcones are irrelevant. See the Relativity of Simultaneity. Resistance is futile.
Precisely ... see my ERL post above.
Everyone.
A flowing present time throughout the universe, ala Newton, does not exist. No one has ever even proposed an experiment to verify that it exists. The "stream of consciousness" gives rise to our illusion of a flowing present time. The feeling of "now" is equally and illusion, an artifact of the immediacy of conscious feeling. There is no "now" in the universe or the laws of physics.
Time is what clocks measure. Spacetime, per the relativity physics you believe in (you use a GPS?) is three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension and everything we consider past and present -- absolutely everything! -- exists. Einstein, Minkowski ... check it out!
We never stop experiencing our lives .. over and over, eternally. Einstein called it "the eternity of life".
Everything in the Block Universe persists, or perdures, eternally. There is no "actual real present moment". The feeling of a "now" is an artifact of consciousness. All of the moments of everyone's life are "just there" in your 4-dimensional spacetime "self", referred to as a "worldtube".
There is no Newtonian flowing present time in the universe. Instead, your consciousness "flows" ... it's called the stream of consciousness. It's the stream of consciousness in a static and unchanging spacetime that gives rise to the illusion if a flowing time. It's the immediacy of conscious experience that feels like a "now".
These aren't mere fringe whack opinions. Check out Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, the associated Relativity of Simultaneity, and Minkowski spacetime for the source materials. And try not to be diverted by the many ridiculous philosophical notions about what consciousness is. Consciousness is a feeling! Check out Damasio's "The Feeling of What Happens" ...
Unfortunately, there is no "now" in the universe, or in the laws of physics. No flowing Newtonian present time either. Spacetime is unchanging ... it's called the Block Universe.
Unfortunately, there is no "now" in the universe, or in the laws of physics.
Hello Stormy Dragon!
So delighted to read your post. I hope you check back occasionally and find my post. What follows is from an email I sent to physicist Mark Stuckey et al, of "Relational BlockWorld" RBW fame. I've been researching the issues of consciousness in the block universe for about three years now, an issue that the Philosophers and Physicists I've written wish to avoid considering. My conclusions are in my paper, "Einstein's Breadcrumbs" which I'd be happy to email you ... email me at -- ERLTalk @ outlook.com -- I'd love to exchange thoughts. Apologies for the length.
=========
I would like to call your attention to an unrealized, but likely implication of the persistence of consciousness in the block universe, namely the hypothesis that each of us eternally re-experiences our lifetime. I credit Einstein with the only statements that have been made regarding that proposal. I refer to his handful of suggestive quotations as “Einstein’s Breadcrumbs” (EB) because, taken together, they indicate that Einstein believed in what he termed “the eternity of life.” I have formalized his hypothesis as The Eternal Re-experiencing of Life (ERL).
Here are the Einstein quotations for your consideration:
1. “Enough for me is the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality ...” ..." ...”, from the famous Besso quote.
2. “It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity
3. "I believe the mind is immortal in the same sense as the body for it is difficult to doubt that the capacity to build living bodies and consciousness is connected with matter.”
4. “That [death] means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics
The essence of the ERL hypothesis is this, quoted from EB:
“We don't eventually experience our death and then restart another iteration of our life experience at conception. Rather, each of our lives is like a recording in spacetime, played back continuously by our brains from every point in the recording. All of our conscious moments, all of our “nows” participate in the “flow of consciousness,” as discussed in the “Stubbornly Persistent Illusion” section further on, so that no conscious moment is experienced separate from that flow, called the “stream of consciousness” since the days of William James.
Each conscious moment, then, is a fleeting component of a stream of consciousness. When we envision a series of our conscious moments, understanding each moment as part of an ongoing flow, we can see the moments in our conscious lives as a series of streams of consciousness, like continuously moving beads strung together one after another on an endlessly refreshed fixed-length string. Your stream of consciousness as you read this description is pursued by streams you've already experienced and is following the streams in your future that you've yet to discover. From your point of view, the pursuing streams are repeating the experiencing you've left behind and your current experience would be seen as a re-experiencing from the point of view of the streams ahead of you on the timeline. Given this perspective, because all of those streams are “you” (albeit the you as you exist at multiple unique spacetime co-ordinates), the experiencing of any of your conscious moments can be understood as a re-experiencing.
This re-experiencing of your life is not a recurrence, as in Nietzche's Eternal Recurrence, because to recur is to happen over again. But nothing happens in the BU and that includes your life. Your life does not happen and, indeed, has not happened even once – it has not happened at all! Obviously, then, ERL does not mean that our lives happen over and over eternally. Our lives are "just there" in the BU – as static and unch
I have an Alcatel with an enabled FM radio chip. The audio jack is used for an antenna, usually provided by the wire on the earbuds/headphones you have plugged in. However I can also use an male-male standard audio cable in the jack as an antenna while directing the audio stream to a Bluetooth speaker.
So the removal of the audio jack removes this radio functionality as well as all of the other uses that have been noted.
What constitutes a simulation? Perhaps our imaginations are being limited by the nature our nascent and primitive computer experience.
Try this "simulation" scenario on:
Per Einstein's Relativity Physics (STR, the Special Theory of Relativity), which is certainly settled physics at this more-than-a-century-removed point, we live in a Spacetime of three dimensions of space and one temporal dimension, often called Minkowski Spacetime. Spacetime is also referred to as the Block Universe, in which everything exists (or perdures to use the philosophical terminology). There is no flowing time - time does not exist. Everything we consider "past" and "future" is there - it's all there in spacetime. Everything. Nothing changes. Nothing can change in spacetime.
Most physicists believe in the reality of the Block Universe (BU) but apparently aren't inclined to think or write about it. Lee Smolin now hates it - see his "Time Reborn" - but his book provides an instructive overview of the physics. Dr. Smolin is agitated about the non-existence of free will, the ever-silly naivety, but, in fact, the obvious immediate implication of the BU containing conscious beings is that we all re-experience our lives (these very same lives we're living) repeatedly and eternally (or until spacetime ceases to exist). I've acronym'd that hypothesis as ERL - the Eternal Re-experiencing of Life. Interestingly, Einstein seems to have believed in ERL, which he referred to as the "Mystery of the Eternity of Life".
The BU containing conscious organisms presents us with a fascinating architecture for a Virtual Reality ... our Real Reality:
Briefly, consider the unchanging BU as The Data ... talk about Big Data! Now consider that consciousness is a "feeling", a meta-feeling if you like, but it's a biologically produced characteristic of a system of "meatware" of organic construction. Consciousness "flows" - it's the "movie-in-the-brain" per neuroscientist Antonio Damasio - the "flowing" experience we mistake for a "flow of time" (which doesn't exist in the BU). Our sense of "now" is not a sense of a time, by the way, but is rather a default charasteristic of conscious experience - all of our conscious experiences happen "now" and all of our "nows" are like frames in the "movie-in-the-brain".
Some of the fixed events in fixed spacetime act as sensations - the inputs to our body-shaped system of meat electronics. Some as yet undetermined brain structure, most likely the brainstem (the "reptilian brain"), creates consciousness from this input as an output - a feeling that is an analog "reality" simulation, the feeling of being centered in a world. The brain is the VR Headgear, producing the continuous, flowing simulation of a reality that is the experiencing of our lives. Significantly, our subjective VR experience of reality is nothing at all like the external world - it is completely different from The Data. In spacetime there is no sound, no color, no ... (add an endless list of the elements of our conscious experience to complete this qualia list).
So there you have it. The Block Universe is not a simulation as we currently conceive one, but the direct implication that it was created or constructed in its entirety as an implementation of eternal conscious experience is a fascinating one. You likely believe this must be case ... if you believe in the validity of Relativity Physics (do you use your GPS much?) and believe that the brain creates consciousness (regardless of what you believe consciousness to be) then you believe in ERL, a hypothesis I am so far unable to falsify.
Intelligence is Pattern Matching. See any IQ test.
We don't understand what human intelligence is or how it works, that's why. Here's my $.02: The human brain is a Story Engine. Everything we think and everything we know is a story - we perceive and learn in story form. Memories are stored and retrieved as stories. The simplest story form is the metaphor. Metaphors rooted in our bodily existence are the basis of individual learning (see "Philosophy of the Flesh"). Speech, writing, mathematics, science, art, and music encode our human stories. All of human experience - all encoded and manipulated as stories! What we call Intelligence is pattern matching of stories within and across human interest domains ... see any IQ test for confirmation. Creativity itself derives from pattern matching, very often across knowledge and experience domains.
If we wish to create a human-like Intelligence, we must create a human-like Story Engine. As far as I can tell, no one taking this approach.
I have only recently begun considering this hypothesis of Story as Intelligence, but it seems plausible on many levels. I suspect Story functionality is what distinguishes human brain functionality from that of closely related primates. I'd appreciate hearing other's thoughts on the hypothesis and its applicability to the creation of AI.
I've often wondered about encoding the fundamental motivations for an AI. Perhaps, as with ourselves, the prime directive might simply be to keep the story unfolding.