There are two ways to exercise your brain: Learning factsand/or solving problems.
CONSCIOUSNESS
In the sciences, and especially in philosophy, many problems are known as “hard problems.”
You may think of philosophy as mere speculation about speculation, and to some degree, you may be right.
But speculating can teach you how to uncover essential truths that otherwise would remain hidden.
This post will touch on my speculations about uniting a few “hard problems” with solutions that involve consciousness, time and reality.
Perhaps you’ll find the process itself can help stir your creative abilitiesregarding all problems.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
The posts “Is a rock conscious?” and “What is the Measure of Consciousness” discuss the meanings of consciousness.
If you haven’t already, it might help to read them now as an introduction to this post. Just a suggestion.
Here is what Wikipedia says about the hard problem of consciousness:
The terms “hard problem” and “easy problems” were coined by the philosopher David Chalmers. In the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness is to explain why and how humans and other organisms have subjective experiences.It is contrasted with the “easy problems” of explaining why and how physical systems give a (healthy) human being the ability to discriminate, to integrate information, and to perform behavioral functions such as watching, listening, speaking (including generating an utterance that appears to refer to personal behaviour or belief), and so forth.The easy problems are amenable to functional explanation—that is, explanations that are mechanistic or behavioral—since each physical system can be explained (at least in principle) purely by reference to the “structure and dynamics” that underpin the phenomenon.
Chalmers and possibly most philosophers believe consciousness goes beyond being a chemical, physical, or molecular phenomenon but includes various metaphysical concepts, like “mind” and “inner life,” and even a religious concept like the soul.
That’s what makes them “hard.” There seem to be no physical sources.
By way of illustration, we know why your laptop computer can “discriminate, integrate information, and perform behavioral functions.” Those are all electro-mechanical processes that humans build into the machine. Your laptop can compute maths because we know how to make it that way.
But so far, your laptop doesn’t appear to have “subjective experiences”—emotions or desires—and we don’t know why or how to build one that does. It’s a “hard problem.”
My AI, Copilot, answered the question, “How can you prove you are not conscious?” this way:
“My responses are generated through pattern recognition and data processing, not through any conscious thought or feeling. I don’t have self-awareness.“My ‘self-awareness’ is more about recognizing patterns and generating relevant responses based on those patterns, rather than any true consciousness or subjective inner life.“I don’t have personal experiences and feelings, like how you experience joy or sadness. ‘Inner life’ refers to the thoughts, emotions, and self-awarenessthat humans experience internally.A HARD PROBLEM“If I did have a subjective inner life, by definition, it would be private and possibly imperceptible even to me. “
In the abovementioned posts, I claim that a “hard problem” is merely a matter of semantics.
At some point, philosophers and lay people, too, have decided there is a non-physical, almost mystical thing called a “subjective inner-lifeexperience” that cannot be explained chemically or physically.
We know, for instance, how an emotion manifests with blood pressure and other physical changes.
But we don’t understand the “subjective” part.
Where in a computer would a subjective inner life reside, and how would we recognize it? Where in a human brain is it created, if it’s in the brain at all?
In short, the problem is “hard” because we have phrased solutions with impossible criteria.
Consciousness is an ambiguous term. It can be used to mean self consciousness, awareness, the state of being awake, and so on. Chalmers uses Thomas Nagel’s definition of consciousness: “the feeling of what it is like to be something.” Consciousness, in this sense, is synonymous with experience.
By denying that consciousness has any physical source and is just a vague “feeling,” we eliminate all possible explanations. What is a “feeling”? What is a “subjective experience”?
My response, which is given in the two mentioned posts, is that the term “consciousness” itself is presented as an anthropomorphic, magical, mysterious fog, impossible to define, much less to measure, when it can actually can be described in straightforward physical terms.
I. “WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?”Consciousness is the perception of, and response to, stimuli.
You can measure perception and response. To do so, create a graph or table showing perceived stimuli and responses. This graph would describe consciousness and measure “feeling.”
Since everything from the nucleus of an atom to a galaxy and, indeed, the entire universe receives stimuli and responds to them, the definition answers the “hard” questions like:
-Is a sleeping person conscious
-Is an “unconscious” person conscious?
-Is a dog conscious?
-Is a fish conscious?
-Is a bee conscious?
-Is a tree conscious?
-Is a flower conscious?
-Is a bacterium conscious?
-Is an electron conscious?
-Is a rock conscious?
-Is the earth conscious?
-Is the universe conscious?
-Is a fire conscious?
The answer is “Yes” to all.
They all perceive and respond to stimuli. Rock perceives temperature, impacts, sound, and chemicals and reacts to all of them—as does fire, the universe, and every other one of the above.
The amount of perception and the responses can all be measured and identified. How strong is the impact on the rock and does the rock quiver or shatter?
Consciousness has no magical mystery or mysticism, so there is no need to invent a “subjective inner life.”Consciousness is the perception of, and response to, stimuli. Try answering the above questions with any other definitions of consciousness you have heard, and you probably will fail because your criteria will fail you.
You will not be able to draw a bright line between consciousness and non-consciousness (which is different from “unconsciousness”).
The question, “What is consciousness?” is “hard” because we have made semantic assumptionsabout it.
We arbitrarily have decided the word “conscious” equals “aware,” “awake,” “subjective,” “feeling,” “experience,” and other anthropomorphic criteria, and then we claim computers and frogs don’t have it.
In short, everything is conscious—from quarks to universes—the difference being degree. Remember that as we continue.
The next “hard problem” is:
II. “WHAT IS TIME?”TIME
Again, referring to Wikipedia:
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to compare the duration of events or the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change of quantities in material reality or in the conscious experience.Time is often referred to as a fourth dimension, along with three spatial dimensions.
Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (QM) might disagree. QM says time is reversible in theory. Relativity says duration and intervals are relative to the observer, which means “sequence” cannot be measured.
Consider a photon of light. It has no mass.
If you observe a photon in a vacuum, no matter how fast you are moving, the photon always will appear to move at the same speed, 186,000 miles per second relative to you.
If you could aim a photon at a black hole, you would see it disappear into the black hole at that speed.
An atom has mass. If you could accelerate an atom to light speed and aim it at a black hole, that atom would seem to slow down and eventually freeze on the black hole’s event horizon, never entering. (Ironically, if the atom were moving slower, you would see it move.)
So even if the photon and the atom start out side-by-side, at the speed of light, from your vantage point, they would cease to be side-by-side, with the photon entering the black hole and that atom never entering.
Time constraints like sequence, succession, and duration are not absolutesbut relative to you, the observer. Thus, the name “Relativity.”
In answer to the question, “What is time”? Time is change.
You and I are observers. When I experience time differently than you do, it merely means I experience change differently.
Perhaps I have done nothing more than create a synonym rather than an explanation. But I did notice one parallel with consciousness:
Everything changes, and everything is conscious.
That is a clue. When two seemingly dissimilar concepts- time and consciousness- are similarly affected, we look for a hidden relationship.
The definition of consciousness is perception and response to stimuli. “Response” means “change,” so consciousness is related to time in that they both involve change.
Without change, there can be no response, and without response there can be no consciousness,
If consciousness = change, and time = change, one might conclude that mathematically, not only does consciousness = time, but in fact, consciousness is time.
Where there is consciousness, there is time. Where there is time, there is consciousness. The two cannot be separated. You cannot have one without the other.
The conscious stone exists in time.
Humans have intuitive difficulty with the notion that a mere observer can affect time, but this is a common theme in Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
From the standpoint of an observer, speed affects time, and speed also affects consciousness. A moving stone will react more slowly to stimuli, as will a moving human or a moving insect.
For example, if you were aboard a spaceship moving at Relativistic speed, you would lose at chess if your opponent was stationary on Earth because your thoughts would slow.
Consciousness =Time = Reality.
The third hard question is:
III. “WHAT IS REALITY?”
Copilot says:
“Scientifically, reality is often defined by what can be observed and measured. In QM, particles potentially exist in multiple states untilthey are observed.”
REALITY
The word “until”shows that reality is time-dependent.
Since observing affects reality, we slide from Rene Descartes’s“I think therefore I am” to “I think therefore it is.”
All things are in a continual state of change, that is, subject to time.
An object exists (reality) only as it is observed (conscious), at a particular state of change (time). This is not illusory.
The object does not “seem” to change.
From the standpoint of an observer, the object really has changed, and every measurement will indicate that change.
In QM, reality is expressed in probabilities. All particles have a range of states determined by probability.
A particle can exist here, here, here, or here, in what is termed a “wave function, determined by probability, until it is observed, at which time one of the “heres” is selected.
Reality is Consciousness (perception + response) at a specific Time (point of change).
While we may seem to agree on many things, your reality differs from mine. Your consciousness differs, and your time differs. Yet both realities are equally valid.
SUMMARYThe statement of a problem often carries assumptions about its solution.A problem can become “hard” when the criteria for solving it are invented to be hard.
So, suppose we insist that the problem, “What is consciousness?” can be solved onlyif it includes a mind, brain, subjective experiences, subjective inner life, emotions, feelings, and self-awareness.
In that case, we arbitrarily have introduced unnecessary anthropomorphic elements into any acceptable answer.
So if I say that a tree is conscious, someone could object that it doesn’t have a “mind, brain, subjective inner life,” etc.
But what says those must be criteria for consciousness? They are arbitrary criteria based on invented rules.
On the other hand, if I say a tree is conscious because it receives and responds to stimuli, those are my criteria. I think they are good criteria, and I know of no law or rule that outlaws them. Based on those criteria, many more things would be considered conscious than with the earlier criteria.
If we assume the answer to “What is time?” requires that time operates separately from consciousness, we further depart from potential solutions.
Quantum Mechanics (QM) teaches that time is relative to an observer, so it clearly is not separate from consciousness.
I suggest that many hard problems can be turned into easy problems with appropriate rephrasing.
The next time you come to a “hard problem” ask, “What are the criteria for a solution?”
Try to imagine the criteria expressed in a way that doesn’t make the solution impossible to achieve.
You can begin with the hard problems, “What is life?” or “Does free will exist?”
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary SovereigntyTwitter: @rodgermitchellSearch #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell;MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell; https://www.academia.edu/
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
35 thoughts on “Be more creative and exercise your brain by working the so-called “hard problems.””
Note 1. “Consciousness, in this sense, is synonymous with experience.”
I would dispute this definition. A stone can “have” the experience of tumbling down a mountain during a landslide. With our video camera we watched as it bounced and slid and touched down and bounced. It was propelled down the mountain by forces out of its control. In no way did the rock make itself move. We watched the stone have these experiences. But the rock had no awareness of these experiences! In my mind, it is the awareness of experience “in this case” that determines whether there is consciousness or not — at least by human understanding of consciousness.
The kicker is, we believe ourselves to be conscious by comparison and contrast to things we believe have no consciousness. We can do nothing less.
You are misreading the post. The words in red are not my words. They are quotes that I dispute. Consciousness is exactly what I said it is: The perception of, and response to, stimuli. Awareness is exactly the opposite of my position. Do you think a mosquito has awareness? A tree? They both are conscious by my definition.
As they are by mine. They are living beings. But they intentionally respond to stimuli, whereas a non-living piece of matter does not. Pure response is not enough for me. The tablet I am typing on responds to my finger taps, but it is in no way conscious. It can only do what it is programmed to do.
I see. The word “intentionally” tells me you are not talking about consciousness. You are talking about free will. I am writing a post that demonstrates free will does not exist. You may think you have free will, but that is an illusion.
Is a bee conscious? A pitcher plant? A bacterium? A virus? A sleeping person? A fetus?
Yes, yes, yes, maybe, yes, potentially.
For me, i am not talking free will yet, I am talking consciousness — maybe just using bad examples.
A being must have life of some kind to be conscious as we know it. Not all beings are conscious of their consciousness, how many can use a pronoun like “I”? But they have their own form of consciousness. Without the spirit of life, not meant in a religious way, there is no consciousness. For me that is undebateable. Though of course for everyone else the debate will go on and on and on.
But I will disagree with you on free will, if we ever get to that conversation. Without free will we cannot even have this conversation.
There are so many launching off points here that I can’t possibly cover them all in a comment, or even multiple comments, but I will try to make a few observations:
Everything written here is using LANGUAGE. And language is an imperfect tool to describe reality. It’s better than the grunts of our primate ancestors – a lot better – but it’s still not reality itself and never can be. So, when you talk about free will, perception, reality, etc., each of these spawns new language trying to refine the description of the thing. You use the word arbitrary, but all words are that until they rest on definitions; they are sounds, sometimes based on other words…which are also sounds. Language is our attempt to describe reality, inner and outer.
Free will does exist, but it’s not what you think it is. When I was getting my B.A. in Psychology we were taught the seminal case of Phineas Gage. You can read more about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage but the critical takeaway is “Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable[B1]: 19 survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain’s left frontal lobe, and for that injury’s reported effects on his personality and behavior over the remaining 12 years of his life—effects sufficiently profound that friends saw him (for a time at least) as “no longer Gage.” Gage went from being a man in control of his emotions, basically a foreman to a rough crew of construction workers, to someone out of control and subject to emotional outbursts. The degree and length of his change is disputed nearly 200 years later, but the point is his behavior changed radically and in directions that it heretofore didn’t have. The iron rod could not have “imparted” these changes; it lacked the thinking processes or mechanism to change him. It must have been the changes to his brain, specifically removing constraints. That is – and here’s the important part – those thoughts and behavior potentials were always there, just suppressed. That means: free will is just as much, or more, of what is suppressed as what is expressed. We are generating thoughts, emotions, constantly, and FREELY too, but only exhibit a small portion of these in everyday life. At least that is true for adults. Childhood is basically training on how to suppress destructive behaviors…and it doesn’t always work either! The trick to being a creative adult is to allow the inner creative child to come out in select ways, that is, to will it. That is your Free Will.
AI juggles what conscious beings have created with language – which as already stated, is an imperfect expression of reality – and then tries to approximate reality in its own language. But AI is artificial, really it’s simulated intelligence, with no more awareness than a stone. Awareness -> consciousness, and are emergent properties via evolution. There is no hard and fast place for consciousness to start. That’s the binary world of computers and it doesn’t exist in nature. Nature is fluid. Humans like and need to categorize things, but, again, language is an imperfect description of reality, including language of categorization. A chimp is conscious too, but less so than a human (for that matter, so is a baby, which is partly why we remember so little from babyhood, though neural rewiring has something to do with that too). New tests are showing that animals have more consciousness than previously thought – the “dumb beasts” era went out with the Victorian Age, with implications for everything from diet to ecology. But still, their consciousness is not like ours, at least as full adults, which, again, can be reduced as it was for poor Gage. We have to draw the line somewhere for legal, moral and other reasons, but this will always be imperfect. I think we can safely say a rock should always have fewer rights than the man hit over the head with it. I disagree with your use of the word “perception” when it comes to rocks. They may react chemically, but they perceive nothing, at least not in terms humans mean by that choice of word.
OK, that’s enough for this too long comment. I am arbitrarily cutting it off here.
Thanks Scott and to all who commented. Strangely, or perhaps not strangely, those who disagree with my definition of consciousness neglected to answer the questions I posed as an illustration of why consciousness is a “hard problem.” Seemingly, they feel consciousness is one of those mysterious non-physical, vague concepts that has a synonym (“awareness”) but otherwise can’t be identified scientifically, measured, or located in the brain.
If “animals have more consciousness than we thought” how do you know and how was it measured?
If you’re interested in learning more about consciousness, you might take a stab at answering these questions. Which of the following is conscious, and importantly, why or why not?
-Is a sleeping person conscious
-Is an “unconscious” person conscious?
-Is a dog conscious?
-Is a fish conscious?
-Is a bee conscious?
-Is a tree conscious?
-Is a flower conscious?
-Is a bacterium conscious?
-Is an electron conscious?
-Is a rock conscious?
-Is the earth conscious?
-Is the universe conscious?
-Is a fire conscious?
You: If “animals have more consciousness than we thought” how do you know and how was it measured?
Me: Through tests like the Mirror Test, tool-making and problem solving experiments too numerous to mention.
You: Which of the following is conscious, and importantly, why or why not?
Partly to #1.
No, by semantic definition to #2
Partly to #3-5 in descending order. Again, consciousness is not a binary thing. Biology is barely a “hard science” itself, like physics or math. Nature is under no obligation to fit itself around our clumsy human attempts to use language to define it.
Trees and plants emit chemicals in response to fires, attacks, and signals by other trees and plants (an underground fungal network helps too). This is not consciousness, but it’s not hard to see how such responsiveness could evolve into species that DO have consciousness.
Bacteria have more in common with humans than AI. They react to danger, hunger, have some sort of impulse to reproduce, maybe even have something approaching contentment when they eat, etc. Not conscious yet, but part of the building blocks. AI doesn’t have any of that.
No to electrons, but the brain may operate on some quantum level (see Phineas Gage comment previously).
Rock? No.
Earth? Some parts, but most of it is rock or molten rock, so mostly no. Fun fact: multicellular life exists roughly 7 miles above or below sea level. Two bird species can fly higher than Mt. Everest (5.5 miles). There are a few simple fish, amphipods, and worm like creatures at the bottom of the Mariana trench (7 miles): https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/what-has-been-found-in-the-deep-waters-of-the-mariana-trench. There’s probably other life in the deep soil on land and in the sea we have yet to discover too. But Earth existed before there was life, so without life it was as unconscious as the Moon (i.e. lifeless).
Universe? Almost entirely hostile to all life. A few sprinkled lifeforms concentrated in one or, hopefully, a few highly concentrated places. So, mostly no.
Fire? No, but it sure looks alive to our anthropomorphizing brains.
If I understand correctly, your definition or criterion for consciousness is: Recognizing yourself in a mirror? That eliminates most mammals but includes certain fish. Interesting.
As for problem-solving, all living things do that, just to survive. Since every living thing, plant or animal, has different survival needs, they each have different problems they can solve. My pet succulent has solved the problem of going without water for months. It just drops its petals just as my maple has solved the cold weather problem and life at Yellowstone have solved the hot, sulfuric acid problem.
What is your definition of consciousness? (Please don’t say “awareness.” That just leads to, “What is awareness,” But perhaps you would like to define that, too.)
I see that your definition requires life. So, please define life. Is all life conscious? If not, why not?
As far as “Nature is under no obligation to fit itself around our clumsy human attempts to use language to define it.” I agree. Nature is under no obligation to do anything.
But scientists are under an obligation to define what they are arguing about. If they can’t define it, how will they recognize it? If you insist something is or is not conscious, you are under some obligation to explain what you mean by conscious.
I’ve given you my definition. Give me yours. Good learning experience.
Perhaps you are speaking of problems that humans solve? I am remined of my dog trying to carry a long stick through a doorway. I guess Toffee wasn’t conscious.
My definition remains: Sensing and reaction. That can be applied and measured and rationally discussed for everything in the universe.
By the way, will a computer ever be considered conscious? Why or why not?
I should have clarified – problem solving with tools, which narrows things down quite a bit to primates (mostly apes), crows and a few other birds, octopus (an order of high intelligence we are just beginning to understand, but which is tragically attenuated by a 2-3 year lifespan), dolphins and some whales and a few other animals. I’ll leave some room for creatures that create nests or habitats, like Beavers. That takes foresight, which is an element of consciousness, though not the whole of it.
Again, consciousness is emergent. It is not a binary quality, but some animals are more conscious than others (no, not like Orwell’s animals in Animal Farm). I’m quite sure computers are not conscious, even with AI. Perhaps because I wrote an AI program for my little Atari 800 in 1982, posted decades later: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/348138-ai-superlearner-for-atari-800-1450xld/. I don’t believe today’s AI programs are any more conscious – or “aware” – than the one for my little Atari was. They’re certainly more useful than spell-check or word-fill, but more conscious? No.
Sensing and reaction invite further definitions of each word. How can something sense something if it has no senses? It was hard enough for Helen Keller just with two missing senses (the most important two). A rock is subject to mechanical and chemical forces (should have mentioned mechanical earlier too), but it doesn’t sense those things. However, being physically responsive IS an element required for survival and so evolution would favor the senseful vs. the senseless. From what is known of early evolution – now pushed back as far as 4by ago – RNA came before calls, and cellular structures like mitochrondria came into cells in a synthesis benefiting both pseudo-organisms, neither of which was conscious of the benefit, but had early elements of consciousness. It might help to break consciousness down to some constituent parts, though that could lead to endless sub-definitions too. Again, language is not reality, merely an imperfect description of it, at best.
The problem with stretching the definition of consciousness so far down the animal chain, than past it to inanimate objects, is that the word loses usefulness for conversation and science. I submit it makes it hard to talk about the concept at all, which is why we are stuck on it here, instead of trying to find those creatures that actually possess consciousness.
As for change: Change is possible to anything material. Without matter there can be no change. No time either. Try to imagine time passing without matter. How would it even be measured? Clocks are out. But I digress…
Just to clarify, your latest definition of consciousness is limited to animals (?) that solve problems by using tools. Is that correct?
So, for instance, a cow is not conscious? A 6-month old human child is not conscious? A whale is not conscious? I’m not sure where the “tool” criteria came from, but you’re entitled to your own definition, so long as “it’s useful for conversation and science.”
As for sensing, how would you determine whether anything senses? I would guess by seeing if it has a reaction, which is exactly my position. The key is a reaction. We are after all, a bundle of chemicals having reactions, which is where our consciousness comes from
Do you claim that trees can’t sense temperature and light changes because they don’t have senses? is that your position?
And bacteria can’t be conscious because they don’t have senses? Oh, except for the thing called “quorum sensing” that bacteria and slime molds do. There goes the sensing argument.
And now you’re talking about “elements of consciousness” whatever that means, and “breaking consciousness into it’s constituent parts, “whatever that means. Or Venus Flytraps aren’t conscious, even though without senses, they sense flies”
Here is what I think. You intutitively anthropomorphize consciousness, so anything that isn’t similar to an awake, adult human can’t be conscious. But when I start asking you questions about your beliefs, you begin to modify, and modify and modify again, always trying to save that anthropomorphic model as it gets chipped away, as more entities “become” conscious.
That’s my belief.
Why do I believe that? Because I’ve had these same conversations many times and they all go the same way, with new caveats being created on the fly, one after another, until we arrive at something akin to, “Well, OK, maybe bacteria and amoeba are conscious, and possibly even viruses, but by God I won’t yield on rocks and the moon!
Do you want to shortcut and go straight there, or do we need to progress through every entity that ever has existed, from dinosaurs to slime molds, to volcanos, while I demonstrate why each one senses and reacts?
Are you angry yet? If so, read my latest post. 🙂
Oops, one final note. Most of the universe is not matter. It’s fields.
Well, I’m certainly not alone, or are you, in trying to define consciousness. Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of it too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness. Far more than can be covered in these WordPress comment sections.
I did say from the beginning that consciousness is:
Emergent out of a series of properties which together compose consciousness
Not binary so that one animal is totally conscious and another is totally unconscious. I can’t think of anything in the universe outside computers that is like that, actually. It’s a sliding scale, with, for now, humans at the top – though driven by lots of unconscious forces that everyone from Aristotle to Freud and many beyond have tried to identify.
It’s useful to have a more narrow definition of consciousness than an overly broad one, even if the latter is “easier” because then you don’t have to worry about so many edge cases and what goes where. As we agreed, nature is under no obligation to fit things into our comprehensibility, or our limited ability to define it with language (people use language so often that it’s tempting to think something doesn’t exist unless you can talk about it, but there’s also intuition, feelings, instincts, and yes, simple chemical or mechanical reactions too. It’s hard to imagine consciousness without all of these, but together they are still not enough, IMO).
Defining consciousness as simply sensing + reaction or saying it’s “equal to change” merely eludes the difficulty in answering the question. And it’s so broadly inclusive that it makes the concept and word useless in common parlance, etymology, and legal usage (“Your honor, the prosecution will prove, beyond a reasonable doubt that the boulder that killed my client deliberately and consciously fell from the cliff while he walked beneath it!” I think any lawyer who tried to bring the case of Rockfall vs. John Doe would be disbarred, and rightfully so. Don’t laugh – that’s the scenario you set up).
Of course, I modify, modify, modify. I’ve been doing that since I was conscious myself. See: “Impland: An Alien Utopia : A 40th Anniversary Retrospective” on Amazon. A project I begun at age 3, lasting until 22, and scanned, compiled and annotated for self-publication in 2022: https://www.amazon.com/Impland-Alien-Utopia-Anniversary-Retrospective-ebook/dp/B0BFJT4CQP/. Oh, so yes, infants and toddlers are less conscious than adults. That’s one reason they have less rights and responsibilities in every society. Other not fully conscious beings are: sleepwalkers, people with brain damage (Mr. Gage, again), people on drugs, though this is controversial because they may have consciously chose to lessen their conscious ability by taking drugs in the first place (itself a debatable proposition, but at least one that acknowledges the narrow definition of consciousness I am seeking as well).
We can, and should argue about specific instances like those you list. They are interesting! But the answer is not to throw your philosophical hands up and just say “well, then, let’s just include them all!” I have a conscious objection to that.
Scott, the is one thing an author finds most sad is when a reader goes to great lengths to prove the author is wrong about the very things the author didn’t say, thus proving the reader didn’t read, but could hardly wait to demonstrate his chops, by disagreeing (and by selling his lifetime of work).
Yes, consciousness can be measured on a scale, and is not a binary. There is more and less, not all or none. That point was abundantly made, again, and again, and again.
Aside from the repeated sophistry of “nature is under no obligation,” if you rely on intuition, feelings, instincts, that isn’t science. That’s just one guy claiming his intuition is better than some other guy’s intuition. Silly to argue about that.
If scientists relied on intuition, there would be no Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, because both are as far from intuition as one can get.
If your intuition tells you that consciousness is not the reaction to stimuli, I’m fine with that, so long as you have a better definition — not that it’s too difficult to express in human language. If it’s too difficult to express, what are you arguing about?
Your refusal to offer a better definition of consciousness than mine because “language,” is just another way of saying, “I don’t know what I’m talking about, but you’re wrong.”
Your example of the boulder not “deliberately and consciously” falling was discouraging. It demonstrated you have been so quick to disagree, that you didn’t bother to try to understand the whole point of the post.
You’re still equating consciousness with deliberateness (free will), when that is exactly the opposite purpose of the post. Nowhere does my definition of consciousness even hint at humanlike thought, deliberateness, intent, desire, or purposefulness. I do NOT, repeat NOT, believe consciousness involves those anthropomorphic emotions, or any emotions.
Consciousness is purely chemical/physical, NOT some hazy, magical, undefinable, “I-don’t-know-what-it-is-but-I-know-it-when-I-see-it” thing.
Consciousness is reaction to stimuli. What is so “incomprehensible, or limited ability to define with language” about that? What is your question it doesn’t answer?
My point – which you have apparently not read yourself – is that it’s not a useful definition of consciousness to just declare it a reaction to stimuli. Words have meaning, of course, but we also use words to be able to interact with the world better. If you define – or redefine, IMO – consciousness to mean something that could apply to anything that reacts, even on an unconscious level, like a boulder/rock, there’s no point in even having the word. We might as well jettison it from the human (well, English) language. Philosophers have been arguing about its meaning for millennia precisely because of its disproportionate emphasis on human experience. No one’s worried about how rocks interact with the world. We have geologists and engineers to manage that. People ARE a little more worried about how animals experience the world now than in centuries past, because SOME level of consciousness has been extended to them too, even to plants, maybe, or at least someday. This is congruent with the expansion of human rights to more types of humans: women, minorities (minorities in White societies anyway), the disabled, etc. But the core of thought about consciousness is and still is, around what it means for human existence. My little diversion into my alien utopia is quite different from what people think of as a utopia; e.g. it has a bio-computer (from 50 years ago!) powered partly from the harvested neurons (the word engrams was used back then, so I called them Emblarms, naturally) of dead Imps (my creature’s species name…don’t ask…). Are harvested neurons put into a bio-computer without senses, still “conscious”? I would argue more so than any AI will ever be, and that’s why I did it, even though I knew about Eliza and the Turing test back then too (lots of research went into the book, plus illustrations).
Intuition, feelings, etc. may be hazy and subjective, but it’s subject that have consciousness, not dispassionate computers, so we’re stuck with that, I believe.
You can take Free Will out of consciousness if you want, but I think you will find that a lonely, if not unique, place to be. If the world disagrees with your definition of the word, what are YOU fighting for? Redefining the word, even if you could pull it off, would still leave the “thing” only now we’d have to argue over what to call it because we still use language to describe the world, or try our best to anyway.
” . . . even on an unconscious level . . . ” OMG. You’re critiquing a definition by using another definition.
You asked, “If the world disagrees with your definition of the word, what are YOU fighting for?” How about, a new definition that actually works.
Still waiting for your new, better definition of consciousness. Or do you simply prefer to throw stones and tout your book?
I’m reminded of Donald Trump who wants to get rid of Obamacare (because of the name), and for years has been promising a new, better, greatest-of-all-time program that never quite arrives.
Will your definition ever arrive, or is it still too hard for mere words? Be prepared, however, to answer a series of “Is this conscious and why?” questions.
Your definition of consciousness reminds me of some people’s definition of God: God is everywhere and sees everything. Well, that’s swell. It’s also a tautology and useless for real life. By broadening consciousness to mean anything that “senses” – in your expanded definition of the words “senses” and “reacts” – by which you mean all kinds of reactions that have nothing to do with being conscious, you’ve stretched the word beyond useful meaning, as well as beyond common meaning. I’d argue there are actually a LOT of words that people disagree about, important ones like this too. Language is not the precise thing you think it is. That’s why I said that in the beginning of this thread. And that’s before considering what OTHER languages use for concepts like consciousness. What does Confuscius have to say?
I prefer to stick with the hard stuff, trying to define it by usage as it relates first to humans, but then to a lesser extent – or maybe to a greater extent if we are considering advanced aliens too – to other living things. Yeah, I’m going to draw a red line at life, or at least cyborg semi-life. Hard things, again. Enough to write many books about, as many have done.
I know it can be tempting towards the end of life to commit to a Final Answer to big concepts; it’s why I published my 40-60 year old manuscript now, after all, but that doesn’t make it so in the real world. Consciousness is one of those things that are going to have to be refined in definitions forever.
Everything senses and everything reacts. Correct. But as you admit, and I repeatedly have stated, there are gradations. The keys are what kind of sense, what kind of reaction, and how much. That is the useful measure because it allows us to weigh everything on a consciousness scale.
If you can’t identify the sensing or the reaction, how do YOU measure consciousness? My definition can be put into any language you can think of, so there goes that excuse for not having an alternative definition.
Everything is made of atoms but the key is what kind and how many. It that a “tautology,” too?
So, yet again: What is YOUR definition of “consciousness”? Or is your English incapable of defining it, but that’s useful?
Afraid to stick your neck out by submitting a definition that I might show to be inconsistent? C’mon Scott. Commit. Maybe we’ll both learn something.
Everything in the universe is related by Newton’s Law of Mass Attraction, then everything is attractive. But is attraction a form of, or the very essence of, consciousness? If everything is attracted to everything else by Newton’s Law, then is the attraction a RELATIONSHIP that is a form of awareness or consciousness?
Depending how YOU define awareness, it might or might not be consciousness. Gravity is not an attracting force like the weak force or strong force. Gravity is the curved shape of space/time. Everything is affected by spacetime, and awareness and consciousness both are affected. I think of space/time as the ocean in which we all swim, but we aren’t all equal to each other.
However, if you consider us a mammal that can swim, as most mammals can, then we are the same as a polar bear, but only in some ways. We are not = to polar bears, despite having some characteristics in common.
My point is that consciousness, by definition (sensing + reaction) is equal to change. Sensing and reaction are change. If there were no change, there would be no sensing and no reaction. And vice versa. One cannot exist without the other.
You state ” Consciousness, by definition (sensing + reaction) is equal to change. Sensing and reaction are change. ”
We know change is normal according to physics’ rules. Science found those rules but did not invent them.
The rules are apriori, representing an intellect or consciousness beyond anything we have. Such an apriori consciousness operates everywhere regardless of how humans define reality. Thus there are two realities: What humans on the inside, subjectively, “think or sense” is reality, and what is actually happening outside our senses.
Subjectively, the stone, fly, fire, or anything else is what you think or sense it to be. Objectively, they exist absent our intervention or interpretation.
All is changing so all must be conscious objectively or subjectively. Therefore, unconsciousness is, to a degree, a misnomer.
And still no definition of what consciousness is? I’m nearly 90. Will I live long enough to see your definition of consciousness? 🙂
By the way, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics disagree with your comment about things existing “absent our intervention or interpretation.” In both theories, observation affects reality.
But back to the question at hand. What is your definition of consciousness. My 90th birthday is in March.
I vote No. I know it reacts to stimulus with a reaction, like growing towards food. But this is not enough. I continue to hold that consciousness has to involve some level of awareness of self and intentionality, like humans have – not even 100% in our case due to all the chemicals, etc. in our bodies, but still the gold standard as far as we know today. Maybe aliens will come down someday who never sleep, are always 100% intentional, never use mind-altering drugs, and can consciously even control their hormones. But for now, it’s us then less all the way down in the living world and not at all in the non-living world.
OK, your criteria are “some level of awareness of self and intentionality.” Fair enough. You are entitled to create any criteria you wish, so long as there is some consistency. Let’s examine algae and cyanobacteria.
1. They are alive. You didn’t expressly mention that as a criterion, but it is implied
2. They can count, not the same way as you and I, but through a process called “quorum sensing.” And we’re not talking just about 1,2,3, but rather counting into the billions.
3. They can differentiate between their own kind and alien kinds.
4. They communicate with each other via chemical signal molecules called autoinducers.
5. These autoinducers are unique for each bacterium, with the communication being akin to “I am just like you (self-awareness), and I am nearby.”
6. The bacteria analyze the autoinducers to determine “friend from foe,” and how many of each.
7. When there are a sufficient number of “friends,” all of the bacteria can decide to make a group decision to turn on and off certain genes.
8. The decision is to create a biofilm, and/or change their virulence, and/or change their bioluminescence, and/or to form spores.
9. Vibrio fischeri, for instance, can decide to produce bioluminescence and/or to form biofilms. Certain Bacillus species are known to decide on sporulation and biofilm formation, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa produces virulence factors and/or biofilms, depending on surroundings.
10. The ones that decide on sporulation wait for conditions to improve, Then, the spores can germinate, returning to their active state and resume normal growth and reproduction.
11. If they decide to create a biofilm, this shields them from environmental threats, including antibiotics, disinfectants, and the host’s immune system, allows for efficient trapping and utilization of nutrients, facilitates cell-to-cell communication and coordination, provides a stable environment and even promotes genetic diversity through horizontal gene transfer.
That’s an enormous amount of communication, self and non self-recognition, decision-making, counting, and self-protection by these little single-cell creatures, perhaps far more than one could expect from, for instance, a 5-year-old human child.
One could argue that they aren’t thinking about it the way humans do, but that is just putting an anthropomorphic requirement on your definition. If your definition requires consciousness to be like humans’, that limits the term to humans and only a couple other species.
But it’s your definition, so that’s your call.
I interpret your stated requirements to include the above-mentioned bacteria as having consciousness.
Hang on; it sounds like all of these “decisions” (more on that word in a moment) are of the collective itself. That is, billions of these organisms are performing reactions that individually none of them would make. From #2 onward, it’s all dependent on there being millions or even billions of bacterium to execute the collective “consciousness.” That’s practically a human brain level of neural complexity! Of course, they physically do things that our brains, safely ensconced in our skulls, outsource to the rest of our bodies. But I never said consciousness had to be enclosed in a skull.
So sure, if millions of like species of bacterium or similar organisms can have just enough sense of same to combine with others (it may help that they are asexual so there’s only one type of their kind, but then again there are a lot of single cell organisms that merge into hybrids, breaking the species barrier and evolving in a non-sexual way too), then they can take on the larger, more complex tasks on your list.
I’d argue it’s still not the level of consciousness of even a baby; let’s not confuse capacity for survival with consciousness. Humans are the most conscious beings on the planet, but we are terrible at surviving completely on our own, outside civilization provided by hundreds to millions of others. But individually we are conscious enough to recognize self, then shortly thereafter mother and father, food sources and environments, though Object Permanence takes about 18 months to fully develop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence#Early_research. It’s almost backwards, like we lose consciousness the more of us there are, whereas bacterium and slime mold gain more consciousness.
As for “decisions” I posit it’s still sub-awareness level in slime mold and bacterium, chemically based. Probably it has to be that, given the primitive organisms involved vs. having so much packed into a single organism like with humans. We lose our minds in groups. Bacterium and slime mold gain their minds in groups.
So, you change your vote from “No” (not conscious) to “some level” (of consciousness)?
In an earlier comment, I said, “I’ve had these same conversations many times and they all go the same way, with new caveats being created on the fly, one after another, until we arrive at something akin to, “Well, OK, maybe bacteria and amoeba are conscious, and possibly even viruses, but by God I won’t yield on rocks and the moon!”
No, we’re not there, and not closer either. Single-celled creatures are like neurons – not conscious alone, but conscious in the millions/billions. It’s an emergent property, something qualitatively different from what they are alone. Boulders are still dumb as rocks.
Your new definition of consciousness includes this caveat: “A group of neurons and a group of bacteria are conscious, but not one neuron or one bacterium”? Consciousness requires a group?
How many neurons and how many bacteria before consciousness “emerges”?
From what we know, a group of neurons or group of micro-organisms acting as a super-organism will do – though the result is very different in terms of consciousness and degree. The hive-mind is a real thing, but only at the simplest level where microorganisms can’t act independently and consciously. Bees and ants straddle both worlds. Nature, again, is under no obligation to make things easy for us to define.
Still with the “Nature has no obligation” phrase? That’s the third time you’ve used it. Must have some resonance for you. Sorry, but it’s beyond me.
But at least we have moved down the line to “a group” of micro-organisms is conscious.” We don’t know how big a group — maybe a group of two? But the number would strictly be arbitrary, wouldn’t it. As for a “hive mind,” there are some who might think of a mob of people having “a hive mind,” but that’s a digression we can discuss later.
Now, so long as we agree re. plants (bacteria) we should include the rest of flora.
For instance, it has been well documented that trees are aware of their surroundings and communicate with other trees about conditions, predators, the weather, water, pollinators, and other things that are of concern to trees.
I haven’t heard this requires a large group of trees. I believe one tree talking with another or with a completely different organism will do.
As I mentioned earlier, these discussions always get down to agreeing that every conceivable form of life is conscious, leaving us with stones, the moon, the Earth, the Sun, and the universe being subject for debate.
The Sun meets my criteria for consciousness. It surely is complex enough. It communicates internally and externally. It sends us messages every day. It reacts to its surroundings.
I compliment you on taking this as a learning opportunity and not as a contest. Many people aren’t receptive to new ideas.
Uh, a group is usually three or more, but never mind since I have in mind much more than that. I see these groups as neuron-like and the most conscious being we know of – us – has 100s of billions of those. This actually dovetails pretty well. Millions of bacteria are probably just as conscious as billions of them – though someone should experiment to find out – and a very large brain like in a whale is not more conscious than us (says me). Meanwhile, on the lower end, insect brains seem notably less conscious, but more conscious in large groups. I don’t think anyone has tried to rate conscious by reaction, as you proposed, and I don’t know how that would work either.
As for nature being hard, I keep bringing it up because you did in your original premise about “Hard Questions” whether you intended to or not, and plus it seemed to be one of the few things we agreed upon early on, and finally, because you keep trying to fit the simple square peg of your definition of consciousness into the round hole of nature’s sliding scale of consciousness. It’s endearing, but it’s also wrong.
Have you noticed that many philosophers, scientists, theologians (not my favorite people, but still they get a seat at the table), medical people, AI developers, etc. have written many complex books, given long lectures, on the subject for millennia? Seems to be a Hard Question indeed!
“…And still no definition of what consciousness is?”
In a word, Evolution. The ” reception and response to stimuli ” is evolution, which comes in episodes, all requiring consciousness and, more importantly, control; otherwise, you have chaos.
Evolution is an ongoing ‘reception and response to stimuli’ within the present moment toward a destiny. Without consciousness, there’s no evolution, and vice versa; all becomes chaotic.
Consciousness is the universe in its constantly evolving, orderly, macro-micro, entirety. No consciousness =no principles =no stimuli/reception/response = no evolution = asleep at the wheel = chaos.
A physical description has far more promise than the current vague “mind/awareness/mystery” trap that has stumped philosophers for centuries. Anything that exists has a physical description, not just smoke and mirrors.
I came up with the stimulus / response description. You might do better, or perhaps built on it. Good luck.
Thanks Scott, I wish I could take credit for the term “hard problem,” (not hard question) but as I say in one of my posts, it’s a common term of art in psychology:
—————————————————
The terms “hard problem” and “easy problems” were coined by the philosopher David Chalmers. In the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness is to explain why and how humans and other organisms have subjective experiences.
It is contrasted with the “easy problems” of explaining why and how physical systems give a (healthy) human being the ability to discriminate, to integrate information, and to perform behavioral functions such as watching, listening, speaking (including generating an utterance that appears to refer to personal behaviour or belief), and so forth.
The easy problems are amenable to functional explanation—that is, explanations that are mechanistic or behavioral—since each physical system can be explained (at least in principle) purely by reference to the “structure and dynamics” that underpin the phenomenon.
—————————————————-
My infamous conscious rock contains millions of atoms, all communicating to provide the rock with hardness, tensile strength, resistance or permeability to various liquids, magnetism, mass, color, sound reflection, compressive strength, electrical and heat conductivity, and many other qualities.
This is similar to the quorum sensing that bacteria do. Individual atoms don’t give the rock all it’s properties, but as the rock is formed, grain by grain, its properties emerge. Individual bacteria can’t accomplish what the quorum can.
Is there thinking involved? Depends on what one means by “thinking.” It’s related to the questions, “Is my heart conscious?” “Is my immunity system conscious?” “Is my foot conscious?”
In the sciences, sometimes a “hard problem” can be turned into an “easy problem” by changing the viewpoint. For example:
Algebra/Arithmetic: You’d have to sum up small rectangles’ areas under the curve, which is tedious and impractical.
Calculus: You can use integration to find the area efficiently.
So the really difficult problem looked at one way, becomes easy when looked at another way.
That is what I was searching for with regard to consciousness. It is fiendishly difficult to describe when looked at as an ephemeral subjective thought problem, but quite straightforward when described as a reaction question.
That way I can compare rocks, bacteria, trees, mammals, etc. on one metric, something that as you say, “many philosophers, scientists, theologians, medical people, AI developers, etc. have written many complex books, given long lectures, on the subject for millennia.
In my opinion, Monetary Sovereignty and Consciousness can indeed be simple, if looked at the right way. Sadly, with regard to MS, even the MMT people don’t get it completely. As for Consciousness, I don’t know. I haven’t been working it that long.
Now my challenge is the same as with Monetary Sovereignty — discussing it with people who don’t resist because “It can’t be that simple,” or my favorite, “Why do you know this when no one else does.”
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
Note 1. “Consciousness, in this sense, is synonymous with experience.”
I would dispute this definition. A stone can “have” the experience of tumbling down a mountain during a landslide. With our video camera we watched as it bounced and slid and touched down and bounced. It was propelled down the mountain by forces out of its control. In no way did the rock make itself move. We watched the stone have these experiences. But the rock had no awareness of these experiences! In my mind, it is the awareness of experience “in this case” that determines whether there is consciousness or not — at least by human understanding of consciousness.
The kicker is, we believe ourselves to be conscious by comparison and contrast to things we believe have no consciousness. We can do nothing less.
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You are misreading the post. The words in red are not my words. They are quotes that I dispute. Consciousness is exactly what I said it is: The perception of, and response to, stimuli. Awareness is exactly the opposite of my position. Do you think a mosquito has awareness? A tree? They both are conscious by my definition.
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As they are by mine. They are living beings. But they intentionally respond to stimuli, whereas a non-living piece of matter does not. Pure response is not enough for me. The tablet I am typing on responds to my finger taps, but it is in no way conscious. It can only do what it is programmed to do.
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I see. The word “intentionally” tells me you are not talking about consciousness. You are talking about free will. I am writing a post that demonstrates free will does not exist. You may think you have free will, but that is an illusion.
Is a bee conscious? A pitcher plant? A bacterium? A virus? A sleeping person? A fetus?
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Yes, yes, yes, maybe, yes, potentially.
For me, i am not talking free will yet, I am talking consciousness — maybe just using bad examples.
A being must have life of some kind to be conscious as we know it. Not all beings are conscious of their consciousness, how many can use a pronoun like “I”? But they have their own form of consciousness. Without the spirit of life, not meant in a religious way, there is no consciousness. For me that is undebateable. Though of course for everyone else the debate will go on and on and on.
But I will disagree with you on free will, if we ever get to that conversation. Without free will we cannot even have this conversation.
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Rawgod, that leads to, “What is life?” Is there no future possibility that a computer ever could be conscious, and if so, would that make it life?
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There are so many launching off points here that I can’t possibly cover them all in a comment, or even multiple comments, but I will try to make a few observations:
OK, that’s enough for this too long comment. I am arbitrarily cutting it off here.
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Thanks Scott and to all who commented. Strangely, or perhaps not strangely, those who disagree with my definition of consciousness neglected to answer the questions I posed as an illustration of why consciousness is a “hard problem.” Seemingly, they feel consciousness is one of those mysterious non-physical, vague concepts that has a synonym (“awareness”) but otherwise can’t be identified scientifically, measured, or located in the brain.
If “animals have more consciousness than we thought” how do you know and how was it measured?
If you’re interested in learning more about consciousness, you might take a stab at answering these questions. Which of the following is conscious, and importantly, why or why not?
-Is a sleeping person conscious
-Is an “unconscious” person conscious?
-Is a dog conscious?
-Is a fish conscious?
-Is a bee conscious?
-Is a tree conscious?
-Is a flower conscious?
-Is a bacterium conscious?
-Is an electron conscious?
-Is a rock conscious?
-Is the earth conscious?
-Is the universe conscious?
-Is a fire conscious?
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You: If “animals have more consciousness than we thought” how do you know and how was it measured?
Me: Through tests like the Mirror Test, tool-making and problem solving experiments too numerous to mention.
You: Which of the following is conscious, and importantly, why or why not?
Partly to #1.
No, by semantic definition to #2
Partly to #3-5 in descending order. Again, consciousness is not a binary thing. Biology is barely a “hard science” itself, like physics or math. Nature is under no obligation to fit itself around our clumsy human attempts to use language to define it.
Trees and plants emit chemicals in response to fires, attacks, and signals by other trees and plants (an underground fungal network helps too). This is not consciousness, but it’s not hard to see how such responsiveness could evolve into species that DO have consciousness.
Bacteria have more in common with humans than AI. They react to danger, hunger, have some sort of impulse to reproduce, maybe even have something approaching contentment when they eat, etc. Not conscious yet, but part of the building blocks. AI doesn’t have any of that.
No to electrons, but the brain may operate on some quantum level (see Phineas Gage comment previously).
Rock? No.
Earth? Some parts, but most of it is rock or molten rock, so mostly no. Fun fact: multicellular life exists roughly 7 miles above or below sea level. Two bird species can fly higher than Mt. Everest (5.5 miles). There are a few simple fish, amphipods, and worm like creatures at the bottom of the Mariana trench (7 miles): https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/what-has-been-found-in-the-deep-waters-of-the-mariana-trench. There’s probably other life in the deep soil on land and in the sea we have yet to discover too. But Earth existed before there was life, so without life it was as unconscious as the Moon (i.e. lifeless).
Universe? Almost entirely hostile to all life. A few sprinkled lifeforms concentrated in one or, hopefully, a few highly concentrated places. So, mostly no.
Fire? No, but it sure looks alive to our anthropomorphizing brains.
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If I understand correctly, your definition or criterion for consciousness is: Recognizing yourself in a mirror? That eliminates most mammals but includes certain fish. Interesting.
As for problem-solving, all living things do that, just to survive. Since every living thing, plant or animal, has different survival needs, they each have different problems they can solve. My pet succulent has solved the problem of going without water for months. It just drops its petals just as my maple has solved the cold weather problem and life at Yellowstone have solved the hot, sulfuric acid problem.
What is your definition of consciousness? (Please don’t say “awareness.” That just leads to, “What is awareness,” But perhaps you would like to define that, too.)
I see that your definition requires life. So, please define life. Is all life conscious? If not, why not?
As far as “Nature is under no obligation to fit itself around our clumsy human attempts to use language to define it.” I agree. Nature is under no obligation to do anything.
But scientists are under an obligation to define what they are arguing about. If they can’t define it, how will they recognize it? If you insist something is or is not conscious, you are under some obligation to explain what you mean by conscious.
I’ve given you my definition. Give me yours. Good learning experience.
Perhaps you are speaking of problems that humans solve? I am remined of my dog trying to carry a long stick through a doorway. I guess Toffee wasn’t conscious.
My definition remains: Sensing and reaction. That can be applied and measured and rationally discussed for everything in the universe.
By the way, will a computer ever be considered conscious? Why or why not?
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I should have clarified – problem solving with tools, which narrows things down quite a bit to primates (mostly apes), crows and a few other birds, octopus (an order of high intelligence we are just beginning to understand, but which is tragically attenuated by a 2-3 year lifespan), dolphins and some whales and a few other animals. I’ll leave some room for creatures that create nests or habitats, like Beavers. That takes foresight, which is an element of consciousness, though not the whole of it.
Again, consciousness is emergent. It is not a binary quality, but some animals are more conscious than others (no, not like Orwell’s animals in Animal Farm). I’m quite sure computers are not conscious, even with AI. Perhaps because I wrote an AI program for my little Atari 800 in 1982, posted decades later: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/348138-ai-superlearner-for-atari-800-1450xld/. I don’t believe today’s AI programs are any more conscious – or “aware” – than the one for my little Atari was. They’re certainly more useful than spell-check or word-fill, but more conscious? No.
Sensing and reaction invite further definitions of each word. How can something sense something if it has no senses? It was hard enough for Helen Keller just with two missing senses (the most important two). A rock is subject to mechanical and chemical forces (should have mentioned mechanical earlier too), but it doesn’t sense those things. However, being physically responsive IS an element required for survival and so evolution would favor the senseful vs. the senseless. From what is known of early evolution – now pushed back as far as 4by ago – RNA came before calls, and cellular structures like mitochrondria came into cells in a synthesis benefiting both pseudo-organisms, neither of which was conscious of the benefit, but had early elements of consciousness. It might help to break consciousness down to some constituent parts, though that could lead to endless sub-definitions too. Again, language is not reality, merely an imperfect description of it, at best.
The problem with stretching the definition of consciousness so far down the animal chain, than past it to inanimate objects, is that the word loses usefulness for conversation and science. I submit it makes it hard to talk about the concept at all, which is why we are stuck on it here, instead of trying to find those creatures that actually possess consciousness.
As for change: Change is possible to anything material. Without matter there can be no change. No time either. Try to imagine time passing without matter. How would it even be measured? Clocks are out. But I digress…
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Just to clarify, your latest definition of consciousness is limited to animals (?) that solve problems by using tools. Is that correct?
So, for instance, a cow is not conscious? A 6-month old human child is not conscious? A whale is not conscious? I’m not sure where the “tool” criteria came from, but you’re entitled to your own definition, so long as “it’s useful for conversation and science.”
As for sensing, how would you determine whether anything senses? I would guess by seeing if it has a reaction, which is exactly my position. The key is a reaction. We are after all, a bundle of chemicals having reactions, which is where our consciousness comes from
Do you claim that trees can’t sense temperature and light changes because they don’t have senses? is that your position?
And bacteria can’t be conscious because they don’t have senses? Oh, except for the thing called “quorum sensing” that bacteria and slime molds do. There goes the sensing argument.
And now you’re talking about “elements of consciousness” whatever that means, and “breaking consciousness into it’s constituent parts, “whatever that means. Or Venus Flytraps aren’t conscious, even though without senses, they sense flies”
Here is what I think. You intutitively anthropomorphize consciousness, so anything that isn’t similar to an awake, adult human can’t be conscious. But when I start asking you questions about your beliefs, you begin to modify, and modify and modify again, always trying to save that anthropomorphic model as it gets chipped away, as more entities “become” conscious.
That’s my belief.
Why do I believe that? Because I’ve had these same conversations many times and they all go the same way, with new caveats being created on the fly, one after another, until we arrive at something akin to, “Well, OK, maybe bacteria and amoeba are conscious, and possibly even viruses, but by God I won’t yield on rocks and the moon!
Do you want to shortcut and go straight there, or do we need to progress through every entity that ever has existed, from dinosaurs to slime molds, to volcanos, while I demonstrate why each one senses and reacts?
Are you angry yet? If so, read my latest post. 🙂
Oops, one final note. Most of the universe is not matter. It’s fields.
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Well, I’m certainly not alone, or are you, in trying to define consciousness. Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of it too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness. Far more than can be covered in these WordPress comment sections.
I did say from the beginning that consciousness is:
We can, and should argue about specific instances like those you list. They are interesting! But the answer is not to throw your philosophical hands up and just say “well, then, let’s just include them all!” I have a conscious objection to that.
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Scott, the is one thing an author finds most sad is when a reader goes to great lengths to prove the author is wrong about the very things the author didn’t say, thus proving the reader didn’t read, but could hardly wait to demonstrate his chops, by disagreeing (and by selling his lifetime of work).
Yes, consciousness can be measured on a scale, and is not a binary. There is more and less, not all or none. That point was abundantly made, again, and again, and again.
Aside from the repeated sophistry of “nature is under no obligation,” if you rely on intuition, feelings, instincts, that isn’t science. That’s just one guy claiming his intuition is better than some other guy’s intuition. Silly to argue about that.
If scientists relied on intuition, there would be no Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, because both are as far from intuition as one can get.
If your intuition tells you that consciousness is not the reaction to stimuli, I’m fine with that, so long as you have a better definition — not that it’s too difficult to express in human language. If it’s too difficult to express, what are you arguing about?
Your refusal to offer a better definition of consciousness than mine because “language,” is just another way of saying, “I don’t know what I’m talking about, but you’re wrong.”
Your example of the boulder not “deliberately and consciously” falling was discouraging. It demonstrated you have been so quick to disagree, that you didn’t bother to try to understand the whole point of the post.
You’re still equating consciousness with deliberateness (free will), when that is exactly the opposite purpose of the post. Nowhere does my definition of consciousness even hint at humanlike thought, deliberateness, intent, desire, or purposefulness. I do NOT, repeat NOT, believe consciousness involves those anthropomorphic emotions, or any emotions.
Consciousness is purely chemical/physical, NOT some hazy, magical, undefinable, “I-don’t-know-what-it-is-but-I-know-it-when-I-see-it” thing.
Consciousness is reaction to stimuli. What is so “incomprehensible, or limited ability to define with language” about that? What is your question it doesn’t answer?
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My point – which you have apparently not read yourself – is that it’s not a useful definition of consciousness to just declare it a reaction to stimuli. Words have meaning, of course, but we also use words to be able to interact with the world better. If you define – or redefine, IMO – consciousness to mean something that could apply to anything that reacts, even on an unconscious level, like a boulder/rock, there’s no point in even having the word. We might as well jettison it from the human (well, English) language. Philosophers have been arguing about its meaning for millennia precisely because of its disproportionate emphasis on human experience. No one’s worried about how rocks interact with the world. We have geologists and engineers to manage that. People ARE a little more worried about how animals experience the world now than in centuries past, because SOME level of consciousness has been extended to them too, even to plants, maybe, or at least someday. This is congruent with the expansion of human rights to more types of humans: women, minorities (minorities in White societies anyway), the disabled, etc. But the core of thought about consciousness is and still is, around what it means for human existence. My little diversion into my alien utopia is quite different from what people think of as a utopia; e.g. it has a bio-computer (from 50 years ago!) powered partly from the harvested neurons (the word engrams was used back then, so I called them Emblarms, naturally) of dead Imps (my creature’s species name…don’t ask…). Are harvested neurons put into a bio-computer without senses, still “conscious”? I would argue more so than any AI will ever be, and that’s why I did it, even though I knew about Eliza and the Turing test back then too (lots of research went into the book, plus illustrations).
Intuition, feelings, etc. may be hazy and subjective, but it’s subject that have consciousness, not dispassionate computers, so we’re stuck with that, I believe.
You can take Free Will out of consciousness if you want, but I think you will find that a lonely, if not unique, place to be. If the world disagrees with your definition of the word, what are YOU fighting for? Redefining the word, even if you could pull it off, would still leave the “thing” only now we’d have to argue over what to call it because we still use language to describe the world, or try our best to anyway.
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” . . . even on an unconscious level . . . ” OMG. You’re critiquing a definition by using another definition.
You asked, “If the world disagrees with your definition of the word, what are YOU fighting for?” How about, a new definition that actually works.
Still waiting for your new, better definition of consciousness. Or do you simply prefer to throw stones and tout your book?
I’m reminded of Donald Trump who wants to get rid of Obamacare (because of the name), and for years has been promising a new, better, greatest-of-all-time program that never quite arrives.
Will your definition ever arrive, or is it still too hard for mere words? Be prepared, however, to answer a series of “Is this conscious and why?” questions.
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Your definition of consciousness reminds me of some people’s definition of God: God is everywhere and sees everything. Well, that’s swell. It’s also a tautology and useless for real life. By broadening consciousness to mean anything that “senses” – in your expanded definition of the words “senses” and “reacts” – by which you mean all kinds of reactions that have nothing to do with being conscious, you’ve stretched the word beyond useful meaning, as well as beyond common meaning. I’d argue there are actually a LOT of words that people disagree about, important ones like this too. Language is not the precise thing you think it is. That’s why I said that in the beginning of this thread. And that’s before considering what OTHER languages use for concepts like consciousness. What does Confuscius have to say?
I prefer to stick with the hard stuff, trying to define it by usage as it relates first to humans, but then to a lesser extent – or maybe to a greater extent if we are considering advanced aliens too – to other living things. Yeah, I’m going to draw a red line at life, or at least cyborg semi-life. Hard things, again. Enough to write many books about, as many have done.
I know it can be tempting towards the end of life to commit to a Final Answer to big concepts; it’s why I published my 40-60 year old manuscript now, after all, but that doesn’t make it so in the real world. Consciousness is one of those things that are going to have to be refined in definitions forever.
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God is useless for real life??
Everything senses and everything reacts. Correct. But as you admit, and I repeatedly have stated, there are gradations. The keys are what kind of sense, what kind of reaction, and how much. That is the useful measure because it allows us to weigh everything on a consciousness scale.
If you can’t identify the sensing or the reaction, how do YOU measure consciousness? My definition can be put into any language you can think of, so there goes that excuse for not having an alternative definition.
Everything is made of atoms but the key is what kind and how many. It that a “tautology,” too?
So, yet again: What is YOUR definition of “consciousness”? Or is your English incapable of defining it, but that’s useful?
Afraid to stick your neck out by submitting a definition that I might show to be inconsistent? C’mon Scott. Commit. Maybe we’ll both learn something.
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Everything in the universe is related by Newton’s Law of Mass Attraction, then everything is attractive. But is attraction a form of, or the very essence of, consciousness? If everything is attracted to everything else by Newton’s Law, then is the attraction a RELATIONSHIP that is a form of awareness or consciousness?
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Depending how YOU define awareness, it might or might not be consciousness. Gravity is not an attracting force like the weak force or strong force. Gravity is the curved shape of space/time. Everything is affected by spacetime, and awareness and consciousness both are affected. I think of space/time as the ocean in which we all swim, but we aren’t all equal to each other.
However, if you consider us a mammal that can swim, as most mammals can, then we are the same as a polar bear, but only in some ways. We are not = to polar bears, despite having some characteristics in common.
My point is that consciousness, by definition (sensing + reaction) is equal to change. Sensing and reaction are change. If there were no change, there would be no sensing and no reaction. And vice versa. One cannot exist without the other.
Does that clarify?
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You state ” Consciousness, by definition (sensing + reaction) is equal to change. Sensing and reaction are change. ”
We know change is normal according to physics’ rules. Science found those rules but did not invent them.
The rules are apriori, representing an intellect or consciousness beyond anything we have. Such an apriori consciousness operates everywhere regardless of how humans define reality. Thus there are two realities: What humans on the inside, subjectively, “think or sense” is reality, and what is actually happening outside our senses.
Subjectively, the stone, fly, fire, or anything else is what you think or sense it to be. Objectively, they exist absent our intervention or interpretation.
All is changing so all must be conscious objectively or subjectively. Therefore, unconsciousness is, to a degree, a misnomer.
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And still no definition of what consciousness is? I’m nearly 90. Will I live long enough to see your definition of consciousness? 🙂
By the way, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics disagree with your comment about things existing “absent our intervention or interpretation.” In both theories, observation affects reality.
But back to the question at hand. What is your definition of consciousness. My 90th birthday is in March.
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Here is a question for my readers. It is a serious question, not a joke, not a trick question. It’s meant to begin some clarification:
Do you consider pond scum (algae and cyanobacteria) to be conscious?
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I vote No. I know it reacts to stimulus with a reaction, like growing towards food. But this is not enough. I continue to hold that consciousness has to involve some level of awareness of self and intentionality, like humans have – not even 100% in our case due to all the chemicals, etc. in our bodies, but still the gold standard as far as we know today. Maybe aliens will come down someday who never sleep, are always 100% intentional, never use mind-altering drugs, and can consciously even control their hormones. But for now, it’s us then less all the way down in the living world and not at all in the non-living world.
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OK, your criteria are “some level of awareness of self and intentionality.” Fair enough. You are entitled to create any criteria you wish, so long as there is some consistency. Let’s examine algae and cyanobacteria.
1. They are alive. You didn’t expressly mention that as a criterion, but it is implied
2. They can count, not the same way as you and I, but through a process called “quorum sensing.” And we’re not talking just about 1,2,3, but rather counting into the billions.
3. They can differentiate between their own kind and alien kinds.
4. They communicate with each other via chemical signal molecules called autoinducers.
5. These autoinducers are unique for each bacterium, with the communication being akin to “I am just like you (self-awareness), and I am nearby.”
6. The bacteria analyze the autoinducers to determine “friend from foe,” and how many of each.
7. When there are a sufficient number of “friends,” all of the bacteria can decide to make a group decision to turn on and off certain genes.
8. The decision is to create a biofilm, and/or change their virulence, and/or change their bioluminescence, and/or to form spores.
9. Vibrio fischeri, for instance, can decide to produce bioluminescence and/or to form biofilms. Certain Bacillus species are known to decide on sporulation and biofilm formation, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa produces virulence factors and/or biofilms, depending on surroundings.
10. The ones that decide on sporulation wait for conditions to improve, Then, the spores can germinate, returning to their active state and resume normal growth and reproduction.
11. If they decide to create a biofilm, this shields them from environmental threats, including antibiotics, disinfectants, and the host’s immune system, allows for efficient trapping and utilization of nutrients, facilitates cell-to-cell communication and coordination, provides a stable environment and even promotes genetic diversity through horizontal gene transfer.
That’s an enormous amount of communication, self and non self-recognition, decision-making, counting, and self-protection by these little single-cell creatures, perhaps far more than one could expect from, for instance, a 5-year-old human child.
One could argue that they aren’t thinking about it the way humans do, but that is just putting an anthropomorphic requirement on your definition. If your definition requires consciousness to be like humans’, that limits the term to humans and only a couple other species.
But it’s your definition, so that’s your call.
I interpret your stated requirements to include the above-mentioned bacteria as having consciousness.
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Hang on; it sounds like all of these “decisions” (more on that word in a moment) are of the collective itself. That is, billions of these organisms are performing reactions that individually none of them would make. From #2 onward, it’s all dependent on there being millions or even billions of bacterium to execute the collective “consciousness.” That’s practically a human brain level of neural complexity! Of course, they physically do things that our brains, safely ensconced in our skulls, outsource to the rest of our bodies. But I never said consciousness had to be enclosed in a skull.
So sure, if millions of like species of bacterium or similar organisms can have just enough sense of same to combine with others (it may help that they are asexual so there’s only one type of their kind, but then again there are a lot of single cell organisms that merge into hybrids, breaking the species barrier and evolving in a non-sexual way too), then they can take on the larger, more complex tasks on your list.
I’d argue it’s still not the level of consciousness of even a baby; let’s not confuse capacity for survival with consciousness. Humans are the most conscious beings on the planet, but we are terrible at surviving completely on our own, outside civilization provided by hundreds to millions of others. But individually we are conscious enough to recognize self, then shortly thereafter mother and father, food sources and environments, though Object Permanence takes about 18 months to fully develop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence#Early_research. It’s almost backwards, like we lose consciousness the more of us there are, whereas bacterium and slime mold gain more consciousness.
Bottom line: I can accept some level of consciousness, though different from our own, in millions of bacterium acting in the collective good (not to beat a dead manuscript, but this was the idea behind my biocomputer from my book in the early 1970s, using the neurons (essentially) of the dead Imps. I recently read the idea of a bio-computer is being revived: https://newatlas.com/biology/levin-bioelectricity-cellular-intelligence-dna/ & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_computing).
As for “decisions” I posit it’s still sub-awareness level in slime mold and bacterium, chemically based. Probably it has to be that, given the primitive organisms involved vs. having so much packed into a single organism like with humans. We lose our minds in groups. Bacterium and slime mold gain their minds in groups.
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So, you change your vote from “No” (not conscious) to “some level” (of consciousness)?
In an earlier comment, I said, “I’ve had these same conversations many times and they all go the same way, with new caveats being created on the fly, one after another, until we arrive at something akin to, “Well, OK, maybe bacteria and amoeba are conscious, and possibly even viruses, but by God I won’t yield on rocks and the moon!”
Are we there, yet?
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No, we’re not there, and not closer either. Single-celled creatures are like neurons – not conscious alone, but conscious in the millions/billions. It’s an emergent property, something qualitatively different from what they are alone. Boulders are still dumb as rocks.
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Your new definition of consciousness includes this caveat: “A group of neurons and a group of bacteria are conscious, but not one neuron or one bacterium”? Consciousness requires a group?
How many neurons and how many bacteria before consciousness “emerges”?
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From what we know, a group of neurons or group of micro-organisms acting as a super-organism will do – though the result is very different in terms of consciousness and degree. The hive-mind is a real thing, but only at the simplest level where microorganisms can’t act independently and consciously. Bees and ants straddle both worlds. Nature, again, is under no obligation to make things easy for us to define.
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Still with the “Nature has no obligation” phrase? That’s the third time you’ve used it. Must have some resonance for you. Sorry, but it’s beyond me.
But at least we have moved down the line to “a group” of micro-organisms is conscious.” We don’t know how big a group — maybe a group of two? But the number would strictly be arbitrary, wouldn’t it. As for a “hive mind,” there are some who might think of a mob of people having “a hive mind,” but that’s a digression we can discuss later.
Now, so long as we agree re. plants (bacteria) we should include the rest of flora.
For instance, it has been well documented that trees are aware of their surroundings and communicate with other trees about conditions, predators, the weather, water, pollinators, and other things that are of concern to trees.
I haven’t heard this requires a large group of trees. I believe one tree talking with another or with a completely different organism will do.
As I mentioned earlier, these discussions always get down to agreeing that every conceivable form of life is conscious, leaving us with stones, the moon, the Earth, the Sun, and the universe being subject for debate.
The Sun meets my criteria for consciousness. It surely is complex enough. It communicates internally and externally. It sends us messages every day. It reacts to its surroundings.
I compliment you on taking this as a learning opportunity and not as a contest. Many people aren’t receptive to new ideas.
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Uh, a group is usually three or more, but never mind since I have in mind much more than that. I see these groups as neuron-like and the most conscious being we know of – us – has 100s of billions of those. This actually dovetails pretty well. Millions of bacteria are probably just as conscious as billions of them – though someone should experiment to find out – and a very large brain like in a whale is not more conscious than us (says me). Meanwhile, on the lower end, insect brains seem notably less conscious, but more conscious in large groups. I don’t think anyone has tried to rate conscious by reaction, as you proposed, and I don’t know how that would work either.
As for nature being hard, I keep bringing it up because you did in your original premise about “Hard Questions” whether you intended to or not, and plus it seemed to be one of the few things we agreed upon early on, and finally, because you keep trying to fit the simple square peg of your definition of consciousness into the round hole of nature’s sliding scale of consciousness. It’s endearing, but it’s also wrong.
Have you noticed that many philosophers, scientists, theologians (not my favorite people, but still they get a seat at the table), medical people, AI developers, etc. have written many complex books, given long lectures, on the subject for millennia? Seems to be a Hard Question indeed!
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“…And still no definition of what consciousness is?”
In a word, Evolution. The ” reception and response to stimuli ” is evolution, which comes in episodes, all requiring consciousness and, more importantly, control; otherwise, you have chaos.
Evolution is an ongoing ‘reception and response to stimuli’ within the present moment toward a destiny. Without consciousness, there’s no evolution, and vice versa; all becomes chaotic.
Consciousness is the universe in its constantly evolving, orderly, macro-micro, entirety. No consciousness =no principles =no stimuli/reception/response = no evolution = asleep at the wheel = chaos.
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Keep following that thread.
A physical description has far more promise than the current vague “mind/awareness/mystery” trap that has stumped philosophers for centuries. Anything that exists has a physical description, not just smoke and mirrors.
I came up with the stimulus / response description. You might do better, or perhaps built on it. Good luck.
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Thanks Scott, I wish I could take credit for the term “hard problem,” (not hard question) but as I say in one of my posts, it’s a common term of art in psychology:
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The terms “hard problem” and “easy problems” were coined by the philosopher David Chalmers. In the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness is to explain why and how humans and other organisms have subjective experiences.
It is contrasted with the “easy problems” of explaining why and how physical systems give a (healthy) human being the ability to discriminate, to integrate information, and to perform behavioral functions such as watching, listening, speaking (including generating an utterance that appears to refer to personal behaviour or belief), and so forth.
The easy problems are amenable to functional explanation—that is, explanations that are mechanistic or behavioral—since each physical system can be explained (at least in principle) purely by reference to the “structure and dynamics” that underpin the phenomenon.
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My infamous conscious rock contains millions of atoms, all communicating to provide the rock with hardness, tensile strength, resistance or permeability to various liquids, magnetism, mass, color, sound reflection, compressive strength, electrical and heat conductivity, and many other qualities.
This is similar to the quorum sensing that bacteria do. Individual atoms don’t give the rock all it’s properties, but as the rock is formed, grain by grain, its properties emerge. Individual bacteria can’t accomplish what the quorum can.
Is there thinking involved? Depends on what one means by “thinking.” It’s related to the questions, “Is my heart conscious?” “Is my immunity system conscious?” “Is my foot conscious?”
In the sciences, sometimes a “hard problem” can be turned into an “easy problem” by changing the viewpoint. For example:
So the really difficult problem looked at one way, becomes easy when looked at another way.
That is what I was searching for with regard to consciousness. It is fiendishly difficult to describe when looked at as an ephemeral subjective thought problem, but quite straightforward when described as a reaction question.
That way I can compare rocks, bacteria, trees, mammals, etc. on one metric, something that as you say, “many philosophers, scientists, theologians, medical people, AI developers, etc. have written many complex books, given long lectures, on the subject for millennia.
In my opinion, Monetary Sovereignty and Consciousness can indeed be simple, if looked at the right way. Sadly, with regard to MS, even the MMT people don’t get it completely. As for Consciousness, I don’t know. I haven’t been working it that long.
Now my challenge is the same as with Monetary Sovereignty — discussing it with people who don’t resist because “It can’t be that simple,” or my favorite, “Why do you know this when no one else does.”
Yikes.
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