Can we explain consciousness?

Killbot2000

This is one for the philosophers among you. I saw this post arguing for dualism.
http://www.ecoevoblog.com/2013/02/27/574/

seamus

The problem with dualism is that it is demonstrably false. If the material composition or configuration of the brain is altered, we see changes in the person's consciousness, personality, ability and memory.

Thus what we consider to be "consciousness" is inextricably tied to the material configuration of the brain and does not exist separately to it.

Killbot2000

seamus wrote: »

The problem with dualism is that it is demonstrably false. If the material composition or configuration of the brain is altered, we see changes in the person's consciousness, personality, ability and memory.

Thus what we consider to be "consciousness" is inextricably tied to the material configuration of the brain and does not exist separately to it.

But dualism allows for the mind to be intimately tied to the material brain. It's a necessary but not sufficient cause though. How could any dualist in their right mind argue for that position when we know how brain affects consciousness? The answer is they don't. It's a strawman.

Capt'n Midnight

You'd have to explain why physical changes to the brain affect personality. Injuries and so on.

Also at what point in development is a child's mind formed - and this leads to dark ethical questions about what rights someone without a mind might not have






Mod note

This is not the philosophy forum. And I was very tempted to move this thread. So argue from evidence or propose thought experiments. Sciency stuff please.
Theories should make predictions that are possible to test (at some point in the future)

Killbot2000

Nagel is arguing about how evolution is unable to explain consciousness. He's criticising the way many scientists view the world. I think it's quite relevant here. The author of the post even gives the example of his thought experiment "What is it like to be a bat".

Capt'n Midnight

Killbot2000 wrote: »

The author of the post even gives the example of his thought experiment "What is it like to be a bat".

But how does that explain consciousness, it explains a different view of the world but doesn't tell us anything about the belief systems of bats.


It's one thing to suggest that a discussion is possible quite another to bring relevant arguments to the table

Your link referenced this.
http://www.ecoevoblog.com/2012/10/31/zombies-and-the-problem-of-consciousness/

I think most scientists would hold a physicalist view when it comes to their view of how the world ‘really’ is. That is to say, objectively speaking, all there is to the universe are the various interacting fields and particles of physics. The problem with such a view is that our conscious selves prove very difficult to incorporate into this picture. We are subjective beings. Finding out how consciousness came about is known as the hard problem of consciousness.

Philosophy can argue for ages about the number of angels on the head of a pin. All science can do is rule out the ways that failed to detect angels so far. Maybe they have some characteristics like neutrinos ?




It's up to you to suggest what there maybe instead of fields/particles OR show reasons why there may be more than fields/particles. You could suggest that we are controlled by ghosts whose presence is impossible to detect by any means whatsoever but that rules out science.

If you drop in an article that isn't really science , then the further it is away from science the more I'd expect you to show the relevance by saying science stuff.

Killbot2000

The null hypothesis is that consciousness is a physical thing. With Nagel's ideas we have reason to reject this hypothesis. I think you're drawing a distinction between science and philosophy that isn't very helpful.

Duggys Housemate

Killbot2000 wrote: »

The null hypothesis is that consciousness is a physical thing. With Nagel's ideas we have reason to reject this hypothesis. I think you're drawing a distinction between science and philosophy that isn't very helpful.

Scientists will always reject unfalsifable arguments, and arguments without evidence. Where, if not in the brain, is consciousness stored? On what does it act?

Capt'n Midnight

Killbot2000 wrote: »

The null hypothesis is that consciousness is a physical thing. With Nagel's ideas we have reason to reject this hypothesis. I think you're drawing a distinction between science and philosophy that isn't very helpful.

what reason ?

Can you explain these ideas in a way that makes predictions that could be testable or for which there is any experimental evidence ?

And you have to be able to show that you aren't talking about the notion of a soul because by definition it's something that can't be measured.

Otherwise we are back to "Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?" stuff which gets circular very quickly.


I'd sometimes imagine that conciousness is like a program running on a computer. The operating system handles all the I/O calls and hardware so the program doesn't need to know about them.

You can make computers out of very simple components , two inputs, one output ( nand gates take less silicon since electrons move faster) , you only need one instruction (subtract and branch if negative etc.) and a Turing machine can emulate (eventually) anything.

There is research underway to learn how the brain works http://news.discovery.com/human/project-map-human-brain-130219.htm

If someone makes a machine that passes the Turing test how would we determine it's consciousness ?



One of the problems with metaphysical discussions was that for years people could waffle on about the nature of matter and then those pesky scientists went and discovered sub-atomic particles and fields.


Because this is a science forum I am saying that discussions that are essentially philosophical would be better off in the philosophy forum.

Duggys Housemate

I don't think the Turing test is enough. Lets keep this here. Tomorrow I would lime to expand on captain midnights idea of the mind as software.

IRWolfie-

Killbot2000 wrote: »

This is one for the philosophers among you. I saw this post arguing for dualism.
http://www.ecoevoblog.com/2013/02/27/574/

Since we don't fully understand conciousness at present (through neuroscience), claims that people have the answer to conciousness with dualism don't make sense. Pointing at a mystery and saying that it can't be explained by science doesn't mean that Dualism is correct, since it also lacks evidence.

If they argue that Dualism can not be tested because conciousness is made of a distinct substance (or similar arguments), then we can only conclude that dualism is an untestable claim.

The mentioned Zombie argument is a fairly mediocre argument against physicalism. An assumption of the argument is that we could have a physical universe identical to this one, but which lacks conciousness beings, and in their stead have zombies (being exactly the same as us in their physical make up and what they do; except lacking conciousness). Clearly this is in direct opposition to the arguments of physicalism; that conciousness necessarily arises from the laws of the physical universe. In the physicalist picture you can not have a physical universe which is the same in all respects but lacks consciousness. Essentially the Zombie argument assumes the universe is dualistic as a basis for the argument!

Duggys Housemate

Heres a thought experiment.

1) We invent a computer which has a good approximation of passing the turing test, or at least of impressing with most answers.
2) We send it back in time to the nineteenth century with the exact number of spare components and instructions to build a new one.

Ok, some very big asks, but its a thought experiment. And I want to send it back to the late nineteenth century so it can be examined by Maxwell, Edison, Tesla et al. Smart cookies who understand electricity and can build their own computer from the parts provided.

One extra provision, the computer has to remain plugged in. The software is all in RAM, not in hard disk. There is no hard disk, in fact. If you restart it's dead. How we get it back there, and get it plugged in - well, again, its a thought experiment.

Anyway thse men are smart, and they can work out some of what is going on. They can examine the CPUs, the capacitors, the video chips - and possibly get some of the idea theres a a logic processor of some sort, and the CPU is the main "brain". So they make their own computer from the spare components we gave and plug it in.....

And it doesnt work.

They try something else - maybe we suggest it in the instructions- the core of the machine is multiple CPUS and the software distributes it's load amongst the cpus as needed. They find they can take out and replace the CPUs from the inert box they put together, and if they don't take them all out at once, the new CPUS work. They can replace them all. They work. So the "consciousness" of the device is, clearly, as far as the nineteenth century is concerned, not in the machine. Not in the CPUs. You can replace everything in the board with the parts in the non-functioning device - lets say there are multiple RAM slots as well - and as long as you don't take everything out, we'll warn them about that - the inert machine can replace the working machine part by part, until it replaces all of it. So the parts are all replaced and the consciousness is not transferred. So it must exist somewhere else. Somewhere non-physical. Somewhere in the ether.
A nineteenth century philosopher would come up with a dualist solution. We know better.

We know that the software is both part of the hardware; at any one pico, nano, or microsecond. there are instructions in RAM to be executed, data to be examined in the RAM based database, or logic gates running the logic. Some of this is core functionality - the turing test app - some is book-keeping by the OS, but it is all an emergent property of the hardware. On the other hand the software does in some sense exist outside the hardware. Someone has written it, it can run, if compiled, on other machines with different logic gates. It depends on the hardware, but not on all of it, it has the smarts to distribute itself to functioning CPUS if others go missing, or fault.

The nineteenth century reaction to this computer is like our - or the philosophical - reaction to brain consciousness, we don't understand it, ergo it cant be totally physical. The self still exists when the brain is damaged, etc. But this is explainable if you see the mind as - like software - dependent on the brain for hardware, but also at some level running at a level above the hardware. Part of it, but at a higher level of abstraction, above it.

(Although I find it hard to talk about hardware with brains because its all soft)