ToR original
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What has changed with viewpoints on this topic in the past 18yrs I wonder?
How did consciousness manifest?
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exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Do you? That’s nice.
How did consciousness manifest?
Hand up... Me Me... I have it narrowed down to 2 possibilities:::
1. The process of evolution.!!!
2. Supernaturally.!!!
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Actually I think you are answering a rather different question, namely "How did consciousness arise?"
The question, though, is how it manifested, which I take to mean how did it become apparent. So that's more a question about what the first telltale signs of consciousness would be, as life developed. This is quite tricky, because I don't think it is at all clear how one can define consciousness in an unambiguous, or indeed a useful, manner.
For example, do we think a live lizard is conscious? It moves around, shows awareness of its surroundings, exhibits some decision-making capacity and so forth. If stops doing that if you deprive it of sufficient oxygen, at which point we would say it has "lost consciousness". So it is conscious in the sense of being able to sense and react to its surroundings.
But is a lizard conscious in the sense of being aware of its own thoughts, as in John Locke's conception of consciousness, i.e. having a sense of self? Almost certainly not - though how can we know?
Consciousness in the first sense is possessed to some degree by just about all animals, and even, in the broadest sense, by plants too. So it's a continuum, rather than being something that a properly functioning organism either has or doesn't have.
Consciousness in the second sense, i.e. a sense of self, is something internally perceived. I'm not at all sure there is any means of determining from outside whether it is present or not, unless you can converse with the organism through language capable of expressing abstract concepts. In practice that means we can only know for sure human beings have that form of consciousness. But we can't rule it out for other organisms that can't talk to us about it.
Wit-out the process of evolution, how could consciousness have become apparent, other than supernaturally.???
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
My cats are aware, nothing mystical about it.
Cats can be very nasty critters... (possibly demonic?)
What I would like to know from one of the saner cats... why do you push valuable/delicate items off of a shelf.???
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
They've been reading Newton again probably. Field tests are important.
Plus that BOOM when the item hits is priceless.
Plus that BOOM when the item hits is priceless.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Well that’s rather my view, taking consciousness in the first of the two senses I described.
The self-awareness thing, however, is another kettle of fish.
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
Cats are aware of themselves. They certainly demand their needs be met.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
They fail the mirror test.
Since "consciousness" isn't adorned with an adjective in the title (like "phenomenal"), there's tentatively little reason to address more than learning, identification (discrimination), understanding, etc. Just like the rest of the world, those processes can occur "in the dark"[1] without any need of being represented slash manifested as visual, auditory, etc experiences. (philosophical zombie)
A sophisticated memory system is required for cognition, which a rock does not have. So a version of that has to arise in nature (or organisms) before even a bare level of the "dark version" of consciousness can be instantiated.
For instance, one of those vintage mechanical toy trains without a track -- the kind that autonomously "navagated" a room by backing up when it struck an obstacle -- might even count as some bare minimum of awareness if you based consciousness purely on response to the existence of another object. Instead, you want incoming sensory data about an object to be connected to stored data that has been arranged in some way to offer a degree of identification and background comprehension of "what's going on".
Disembodied or "resting on the shelf" AI already exemplifies advanced "information manipulation" of that kind that is utterly amenable to being realized and/or explained by interacting structure (mechanistic relationships).
"Ego" or self is simply the individual history (memory) of an embodied biological or corresponding technological intelligence as dominated by innate or programmed survival imperatives (built-in settings universal to the species). Eliminate the entire stored knowledge acquired since early years and that "unique" person is gone, though the body would still be alive/functioning and sport something akin to the original "infantile vegetable" basic self.
However, supposing that the original poster intended to be gesturing at something other than "unlighted or dark consciousness", but fumbled at it in terms of language...
Phenomenal consciousness has a parallel association with brain activity (NCCs), so that -- in theory -- if you could somehow technologically replicate all the electrochemical patterns, transactions and oscillations occurring in an NCC, then you would also have a corresponding experience with respect to the artificial apparatus. Reproducing the entirety of such might not be necessary, but [in theory] mirroring all the biophysical details would maximize the possibility of private manifestations arising.
So even though there is no underlying science for the origin of the "phantasmal" content of thoughts and senations (only correlation and multiple philosophical proposals), that is not necessarily an impediment to human technology producing the same. People utilized gun powder long before they had a chemistry/physics explaining how the explosions occurred.
- - - footnote - - -
[1] Most people are naive realists and/or even implicit panpsychists (lacking explicit apprehension that they are such). But let's instead pretend that most humans are non-eccentric materialists who do not project psychological affairs upon a mind-independent world...
In that context, the situation after my death or before the first vestiges of my fetal awareness is what matter normally is to itself -- i.e., the absence of everything (not even a presentation of nothingness). Accordingly, the capacity to "manifest" begins with phenomenal consciousness -- thus, the topic's title might arguably be putting the cart before the horse, IF that was what had been intended by the "C-word".
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Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
Not claiming they're savants, just that they aren't abysmally ignorant. I've seen cats working problems in labs at Purdue. Duly impressed.
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
Yes but are the self aware? The mirror test indicates they are not
Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
Yeah but they are babies, do any animal babies pass it?
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
It seems to me that almost all organisms can "learn" to associate with their environment to a degree..
I believe consciousness is just an evolutionary extension of acquired sensory acuity, i.e. cognition.
Single-celled Paramecium can respond to and "learn" to navigate Physical obstacles.
Multi-nuclear single-celled Slime molds can "learn" time intervals from experience.
Phototropic response (cognition) in flora started with "learned" biochemical reactions to light and shadow. Flowers can "learn".
Vision (cognition) in fauna started with "learned" biochemical reaction to light and shadow. Animals can "learn"
It seems that even some inanimate objects can "learn" from repeated exposure to environmental conditions, but that may be just hard physics.
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Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Please post on topic. Do not try to hijack the thread.
I found some interesting articles;
I do not presume to critique the rest of the paper. Just the concept of self-reference
Differential equation
In a self-referential system, one side (the mind) asks : "what is 1 + 1 ? The other side, (the brain) replies: 2
The mind issues the command: "Run!!!"
The self-referential neural system (mind) is the operator that asks its own body "what is the survival function of the "differential equation?"
"Fight or flight"
In a dynamic, ever changing environment, it is the relational (relativity) experience of sensory variation that triggers an internal, cognitive response and the production of an "action potential", an internal response to a variety of stimuli. When this response is a result of "choice", then
the experience is a self-referential subjective "thought" processing. "To Be or not to Be, that is the question"
As this evolved ability is efficient in context of survival mechanics, it follows that over the ~4 million years since the genetic "split" of the human brain from its predecessor and the accelerated evolution of several survival skills that led into spread and the different variations of "modern man", depending on local environmental dynamics.
The simple beauty of "cognition of the differential equation" lies in its ability to measure (experience) and combine the information from multiple dynamical events as a cohesive natural narrative with self.
I know this model does not explain the "how", but it is perhaps relevant in the question "why".
This piqued my interest as I previously posted something in relation to self-referential systems, such as body/brain cytology.
I do not presume to critique the rest of the paper. Just the concept of self-reference
Differential equation
In a self-referential system, one side (the mind) asks : "what is 1 + 1 ? The other side, (the brain) replies: 2
The mind issues the command: "Run!!!"
The self-referential neural system (mind) is the operator that asks its own body "what is the survival function of the "differential equation?"
"Fight or flight"
In a dynamic, ever changing environment, it is the relational (relativity) experience of sensory variation that triggers an internal, cognitive response and the production of an "action potential", an internal response to a variety of stimuli. When this response is a result of "choice", then
the experience is a self-referential subjective "thought" processing. "To Be or not to Be, that is the question"
As this evolved ability is efficient in context of survival mechanics, it follows that over the ~4 million years since the genetic "split" of the human brain from its predecessor and the accelerated evolution of several survival skills that led into spread and the different variations of "modern man", depending on local environmental dynamics.
The simple beauty of "cognition of the differential equation" lies in its ability to measure (experience) and combine the information from multiple dynamical events as a cohesive natural narrative with self.
I know this model does not explain the "how", but it is perhaps relevant in the question "why".
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Note: this thread was resurrected by "TOR original" to make a fly-by comment. Prior to post #181, above, the last post to this thread was back in 2006.
Before Write4U tries to hijack this ancient thread any more than he already has, how about we close it and make a new 2024 start?
Before Write4U tries to hijack this ancient thread any more than he already has, how about we close it and make a new 2024 start?
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