Science and Spirit Weekly Post: More on Consciousness

What is Consciousness?

Reflecting on Consciousness is fascinating. It is such an important subject in the arena of Science and Spirit that I want to continue this thread for a bit. I thought I'd begin with some thoughts about what it actually is. Looking up some definitions on the web, we find such things as:


* an alert cognitive state in which you are aware of yourself and your situation; "he lost consciousness"
* awareness: having knowledge of; "he had no awareness of his mistakes"; "his sudden consciousness of the problem he faced"; "their intelligence and general knowingness was impressive"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

* Consciousness is subjective experience or awareness or wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind.Farthing, 1992 It is an umbrella term that may refer to a variety of mental phenomena. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness


* Vijñāna (Sanskrit; Devanagari: विज्ञान) or viññāa (Pāli; Devanagari: विञ्ञाण) is translated as "consciousness" or "life force" or simply "mind".See, for instance, Rhys Davids & Stede (1921-25), p. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_(Buddhism)

* Strong AI is artificial intelligence that matches or exceeds human intelligence — the intelligence of a machine that can successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can. or see where he defines strong AI as "machine intelligence with the full range of human intelligence. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_(artificial)

* The state of being conscious or aware; awareness
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/consciousness

* conscious - intentionally conceived; "a conscious effort to speak more slowly"; "a conscious policy"
* conscious - knowing and perceiving; having awareness of surroundings and sensations and thoughts; "remained conscious during the operation"; "conscious of his faults"; "became conscious that he was being followed"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

* consciously - with awareness; "she consciously played with the idea of inviting them"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

* Conscious - This article contains episode summaries as well as directing and writing credits from Season 3 of the American drama/adventure television series Alias. Season 3 aired starting on September 28, 2003 (U.S.) and concluded on May 23, 2004. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscious_(Alias_episode)

* conscious - alert, awake; aware; aware of one's own existence; aware of one's own awareness
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/conscious

* A state of awareness or lack thereof
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/First_Aid/Appendix_A:_Glossary

* Some define consciousness as the totality of experience at any given instant, as opposed to 'mind', which is the sum of all past moments of consciousness.
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/sub/spaceodysseys/glossary.html

* The intelligent, supremely independent, divine Energy, which creates, pervades, and supports the entire universe.
www.siddhayoga.org.in/glossary.html


oh, and this:


* Consciousness is the fourth full-length album by post-grunge band Smile Empty Soul. The album was released on August 25, 2009. "Don't Ever Leave" was chosen as the first single off the album. It was also revealed that the band will be shooting a video for the song.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_(album)




Obviously, there are a lot more excerpts I can put here, but I think you get the idea!


So, the next question is: could consciousness be more than this? Is it embedded, latent, into the constituents of matter? Or is it something that slowly emerges, evolves and expresses itself differently in degree and type with each species? The latter is the general consensus in science and philosophy, the former tends to be a more spiritual perspective. I will be posting some more of the different perspectives on this next.



What makes you aware, and aware that you are aware? While you are reading this, I invite you to reflect on what it is that is being conscious of your reading this!


To be continued...but right now I am starting to head towards that time of the day where I become less conscious...

As always, please chime in with your thoughts if you feel inspired.


thoughtfully yours,
Julia Bystrova
Science and Spirit Moderator

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Posted in reply to the post by JuliaB:

What is Consciousness?

Reflecting on Consciousness is fascinating. It is such an important subject in the arena of Science and Spirit that I want to continue this thread for a bit. I thought I'd begin with some thoughts about what it actually is. Looking up some definitions on the web, we find such things as:

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I have found that when seeking to pin down a slippery concept, going to a dictionary or many dictionaries or their Internet equivalents, is a weak reed indeed. All it does is to try to obtain, by some sort of concept averaging, a sense of what other people think. I prefer to ask myself what I think.

After thinking about the meaning of what I perceive as consciousness, I put forward Palmer's Postulate on Consciousness:

Consciousness consists of two and only two parts:
1. A memory capable of remembering the past, and;
2. An intelligence capable of accessing that memory so that it can, easily and without any obstacle, read or reference that memory so as to know that itself (a body, mind or the intelligence itself) was the same entity in the past, that had those experiences stored in memory, as it is now.

I expect that critics will want to say that this puts off the understanding of consciousness onto the understanding of intelligence. Perhaps, but I would argue that intelligence may be easier to assess and tease apart than the vague, evanescent invocations of an ungraspable spiritual somethingness that the workers in consciousness have tried to make consciousness into.

According to this view, it is entirely possible that a computer would have consciousness of itself. It may have had a recent origin (it was made, as we are born) before which its consciousness does not extend and it may or may not know that there will be a time when its power button will be pressed (like our deaths) and it will cease to exist. However, while it lasts (as we live) it is conscious of its continued existence and operation.

I would think that such an intelligence would need to be able to reference that memory easily according to some internal need. The computers of today that are programmed are nowhere near the kind of intelligence that would be required for this definition. In order to qualify, a computer would need to be able to go down a thought pathway based on purely internal conclusions. "I have summed up all the calculations of solar radiation but the number seems iffy, given the two articles I stored in memory yesterday". No computer I have heard of can perform this feat. I assume that dogs can to some extent.

Another corollary of this definition is that all of the Herculean intellectual labors of those workers trying desperately to piece together a complex, otherworldly, working model of consciousness will come to naught. It can be summed up as continuous self-awareness over time. It is in fact a fairly simple consequence of two simpler (?) abilities. Scientific American had a complete issue on the subject of consciousness recently and if memory serves, no one came up with any conclusion beyond: "more work needed".

What do you think?

Paul Palmer

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Posted in reply to the post by Sciguy:

Palmer's Postulate on Consciousness:

Consciousness consists of two and only two parts:
1. A memory capable of remembering the past, and;
2. An intelligence capable of accessing that memory so that it can, easily and without any obstacle, read or reference that memory so as to know that itself (a body, mind or the intelligence itself) was the same entity in the past, that had those experiences stored in memory, as it is now.
...
What do you think?

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There isn't any part of you now that is the same entity as the "you" in the past. We can easily see that our bodies have changed over the years and are not the same. Sometimes they change dramatically within a day or within hours. Our intelligence also isn't "the same entity" as in the past--I've forgotten many things and I've learned new ones; there's no reasonable claim that one's intelligence now is "the same entity" as it was in the past. Your third choice for "same entity" is mind, but you haven't supplied a working definition of mind. I think we can all agree that our feelings, beliefs and thoughts are subject to change and cannot be described as the same entity of those we had five or ten years ago.

Your postulates require a kind of unchanging foundation or strata to function as the basis for intelligence and other mental experiences but which is somehow different than those experiences--an owner of the thoughts and feelings which remains the same over time. How is that different from the Christian idea of soul or the Hindu idea of Atman?

Seanpfister:
I see where you are coming from but I would maintain that your comment is off the mark. I did not intend to range across every philosophical claim that might possibly be invoked but only to nail down the operative elements of what seems to me to be consciousness in my own mind. I have an impression that I am an entity, albeit in a changing mind and body, that has continuity from my earliest days. Those experiences of my childhood are mine, and that child was "me", even though they were long ago and I have changed much, which I admit. I am saying that the internal experience of consciousness relies on my whole set of memories and my willingness (call it a delusion if you wish) to tack them all together (at least the recent ones if the earlier ones are lost) into a recognition of my continuous being. If I lost that, if I could not remember beyond five minutes ago, I would have a much truncated consciousness, hardly a usual human consciousness at all, only an awareness of myself having existed for a mere five minutes, and one that was constantly trailing off and disappearing as the clock ticked. It is memory which reinforces the illusion that I have existed and know it. That is the reason I emphasized memory in my first postulate. You have brought up the question whether perceived consciousness is "real" or not. I am not willing to take a stand on that.

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Posted in reply to the post by Sciguy:

Seanpfister:
I did not intend to range across every philosophical claim that might possibly be invoked but only to nail down the operative elements of what seems to me to be consciousness in my own mind. I have an impression that I am an entity, albeit in a changing mind and body, that has continuity from my earliest days. Those experiences of my childhood are mine, and that child was "me", even though they were long ago and I have changed much, which I admit. I am saying that the internal experience of consciousness relies on my whole set of memories and my willingness (call it a delusion if you wish) to tack them all together (at least the recent ones if the earlier ones are lost) into a recognition of my continuous being. If I lost that, if I could not remember beyond five minutes ago, I would have a much truncated consciousness, hardly a usual human consciousness at all, only an awareness of myself having existed for a mere five minutes, and one that was constantly trailing off and disappearing as the clock ticked. It is memory which reinforces the illusion that I have existed and know it. That is the reason I emphasized memory in my first postulate. You have brought up the question whether perceived consciousness is "real" or not. I am not willing to take a stand on that.

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Look, it's not an illusion that you have existed, but it is an illusion that you have an immutable essence which hasn't changed. In your first post, you criticize workers in conciousness because they employ "vague, evanescent invocations of an ungraspable spiritual somethingness", which is pretty much what your postulates do also.

Western science is very much at the beginning of the study of conciousness and it seems a lot like physics in the early days (early 18th Century). Most rational people were horrified by the implications of Newton's work, including Newton himself. Smart people knew that action at a distance--gravity and the laws of motion--seemed like occult forces. It didn't make sense at all because it didn't fit with the definition of matter. But nowadays, matter includes stuff that has no weight and no mass, go figure. and some astronomers/physicists now say that 90% of matter is composed of a substance that doesn't doesn't emit or reflect light and doesn't interact with atomic particles, but does do gravity. So that's physcial stuff these days--you can't see it, you can't weigh it, you can't measure it but it's all around you. If it weren't in Scientific American, you'd think it belonged in Sedona, AZ, next to a vortex.

Similarly we don't have a well-defined notion of body/mind; we're like those 18 century scientists--we don't have the right model of consciousness and mind yet. That's why we spin so much about whether computers can think--having built the computers, we know how they work, and therefore assume that our minds must work the same way. Obviously minds and computers are different--as you have shown. While a computer can, more or less, have a kind of memory and maintain state, it can't do the neat trick you just did: have a sense of a self that continues from moment to moment.

Seanpfister: You seem determined to drag me into positions that I don't hold. You say: " it is an illusion that you have an immutable essence which hasn't changed. In your first post, you criticize workers in conciousness because they employ "vague, evanescent invocations of an ungraspable spiritual somethingness"

I never said anything about an immutable essence. I am only talking about our consciousness as our perception that we had a longish lifetime with continuity, from our earliest memories until the present. I admit that of course we are always changing, and we know that. We know that the "me" of our childhoods were of someone with a different body and different knowledge and different mental abilities. We know that we have been changing our entire lives. But our perception, our consciousness of ourselves, is that of a continuous single person who has been changing. Where do you find "immutable essence" in any of that?

When I described current consciousness studies as "vague evanescent invocations etc." I didn't actually mean it as a criticism. I meant it as my best rendition of the kind of descriptions of consciousness that people actually use. Such as yourself apparently. You state: "we don't have a well-defined notion of body/mind; we're like those 18 century scientists--we don't have the right model of consciousness and mind yet." That's your belief, not mine. You seem to cleave to mystery and lack of knowledge. I look for clarity. I think I understand consciousness and I think my postulates pretty much sum it up. I don't know if there is a way for you oppose my postulates except to say that you disagree. That's not very satisfying but maybe there isn't any more right now. Given that I can't even critique another person's sense of his consciousness, except to assume it is the same as mine, can we ever make a real test of whether a computer can be conscious of itself? Does a computer have to be able to print out "I am conscious of myself"? And would we trust that? Are we faced with a scientific conundrum where there are no experiments and no objective criteria? Science often just walks away from such things and says they have no scientific meaning. If someone wants to maintain that the world is only six thousand years old (or ten minutes old) but it was created in such a way to have all the artifacts it would have if it were 13.7 billion years old so that it's real age is undiscoverable, science will close up its hot dog stand and walk away. It will of course continue to dissect the world as though it were 13.7 billion years old, but it will not deal with the sleight-of-hand creation claim at all.

You sum up your position by saying: "(a computer) can't do the neat trick you just did: have a sense of a self". I say it can. And I set down what a computer needs to be able to do to pull that off. Is there any objective measurement that can tell us if a computer is conscious or not? Can you think of any? Can you prove me wrong if I presented you with a computer that by design met my postulates? To me, this seems to be the central question.