Consciousness

[Sriram]

Hi everyone,

A nice short video about Consciousness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLE4YAOUqPE&t=135s

Cheers.

Sriram

[Stranger]

A nice short video about Consciousness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLE4YAOUqPE&t=135s

Just wondering if you watched it all. At about 4:04 (>>here<<) he asks the very reasonable question:

But I think I’m getting way too excited about a completely speculative possibility.  Practically, we have to ask, does the universe need to be conscious in order to arrive at its present state. In other words, does what we see around us need a consciousness to direct the events that lead up to what we observe, that lead to life?

Spoiler alert! The answer is "no".

[Enki]

Hi everyone,

A nice short video about Consciousness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLE4YAOUqPE&t=135s

Cheers.

Sriram

Watched your video. All he seems to do is to link science to purely speculative ideas for no good reason and with a total lack of evidence, seemingly working on the principle that if we don't know a great deal about something(e.g. black holes/origin of the universe/fine tuning/dark matter and energy) then we have the opportunity to use any analogies we wish suggest vague and superficial explanations.

Not impressed at all, especially as it seems one of his goals seems to be to make money out of his videos.

[Sriram]

Just wondering if you watched it all. At about 4:04 (>>here<<) he asks the very reasonable question:

But I think I’m getting way too excited about a completely speculative possibility.  Practically, we have to ask, does the universe need to be conscious in order to arrive at its present state. In other words, does what we see around us need a consciousness to direct the events that lead up to what we observe, that lead to life?

Spoiler alert! The answer is "no".

He however goes on to talk of  'fine tuning', formation of complex molecules leading to humans etc...(from 6.23 onwards). 

He ends by listing three possibilities.....God, Universal Consciousness or many worlds materialism. 

[Stranger]

He however goes on to talk of  'fine tuning', formation of complex molecules leading to humans etc...(from 6.23 onwards). 

He ends by listing three possibilities.....God, Universal Consciousness or many worlds materialism.

Well, he reels off what various groups might think and rather oddly lumps all "materialists" into believing in a multiverse. The problem is that we're into the totally unknown here. Without a tested "theory of everything" we don't even know if there was any flexibility at all in the constants of nature. There are also various multiverse ideas that range from pure speculation to fairly reasonable extrapolations of what is known.

We can all make up speculations that suit what we would like to be true but the rational answer is "we don't know".

The whole video seems to be a mishmash of speculations. I've actually watched some of his stuff that is a bit more grounded, although even then he sometimes isn't entirely accurate or doesn't point out where opinions differ.

[Sriram]

Yes..I agree that 'we don't know'.

But the idea of a God (not a biblical God) or Universal Consciousness is no longer just a part of mythology or religious belief, to be casually laughed away.

These ideas can be a part of serious scientific speculation and conjecture.  That itself IMO is a major step forward in bridging the gulf between a small minority of science enthusiasts and a vast majority of people who thing there is an Intelligence at work behind creation.

Cheers.

Sriram

[Stranger]

Yes..I agree that 'we don't know'.

But the idea of a God (not a biblical God) or Universal Consciousness is no longer just a part of mythology or religious belief, to be casually laughed away.

These ideas can be a part of serious scientific speculation and conjecture.

There have been endless speculations about consciousness and, apart from the hard neuroscience, they are all basically guesswork.

Even scientists I admire for other reasons have come up with some rather strange speculations. Take Roger Penrose (who's published joint papers with Stephen Hawking), for example, who basically tried to turn consciousness causes (wave function) collapse on its head and suggested that collapse causes consciousness and hence introduced a kind of panpsychism. His book, The Emperor's New Mind has a great introduction to a lot of scientific concepts (highly recommended for that at least, but not for the maths-phobic). He tried to argue that minds were not computable, using Gödel's incompleteness theorem, but I found it ultimately unconvincing (as did most of his peers), and the leap to QM was obviously a guess (as many of his critics pointed out, he seemed to have seen two mysteries and just assumed a link).

The speculations in the video (black holes linked together) seemed to have no basis at all.

A guess is a guess, and we do need people who come up with bold conjectures, but they are only as convincing as the arguments used to support them and they can't become scientific hypotheses until they make testable predictions (at least in principle).

The big problem with a universal consciousness or some "god-like" being is the total lack of evidence of any conscious involvement (as the video pointed out) in how the universe has developed. Together with the fact that it doesn't really explain the universe or the "fine tuning" at all, it just moves the "problem" elsewhere.

When it actually comes down to it the only evidence we have of consciousness is when it's associated with complex brains, which is why I find the speculations of Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained, From Bacteria to Bach and Back), Douglas Hofstadter (Gödel, Escher, Bach, I Am a Strange Loop), and possibly, from what I've read to date, Integrated Information Theory, to be more plausible.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

There have been endless speculations about consciousness and, apart from the hard neuroscience, they are all basically guesswork.

Even scientists I admire for other reasons have come up with some rather strange speculations. Take Roger Penrose (who's published joint papers with Stephen Hawking), for example, who basically tried to turn consciousness causes (wave function) collapse on its head and suggested that collapse causes consciousness and hence introduced a kind of panpsychism. His book, The Emperor's New Mind has a great introduction to a lot of scientific concepts (highly recommended for that at least, but not for the maths-phobic). He tried to argue that minds were not computable, using Gödel's incompleteness theorem, but I found it ultimately unconvincing (as did most of his peers), and the leap to QM was obviously a guess (as many of his critics pointed out, he seemed to have seen two mysteries and just assumed a link).

The speculations in the video (black holes linked together) seemed to have no basis at all.

A guess is a guess, and we do need people who come up with bold conjectures, but they are only as convincing as the arguments used to support them and they can't become scientific hypotheses until they make testable predictions (at least in principle).

The big problem with a universal consciousness or some "god-like" being is the total lack of evidence of any conscious involvement (as the video pointed out) in how the universe has developed. Together with the fact that it doesn't really explain the universe or the "fine tuning" at all, it just moves the "problem" elsewhere.

When it actually comes down to it the only evidence we have of consciousness is when it's associated with complex brains, which is why I find the speculations of Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained, From Bacteria to Bach and Back), Douglas Hofstadter (Gödel, Escher, Bach, I Am a Strange Loop), and possibly, from what I've read to date, Integrated Information Theory, to be more plausible.

Evidence of consciousness. Doesn't Dennett eliminate consciousness as illusory?

If so how can you both hold that consciousness is illusory AND evidenced only in complex brains?

[Sebastian Toe]

Evidence of consciousness. Doesn't Dennett eliminate consciousness as illusory?

If so how can you both hold that consciousness is illusory AND evidenced only in complex brains?

Do you have evidence of it being anywhere other than it emanating from complex brains?

[Stranger]

Evidence of consciousness. Doesn't Dennett eliminate consciousness as illusory?

Not really, no. He argues that many aspects of it are not at all how they appear from the "inside". There's a TED talk by him called The Illusion of Consciousness, complete with a transcript, in which he doesn't use the word illusion once. It's an eye-catching title but not really what he's getting at exactly. Here's an extract from where he's summing up:-

"What I wanted to show you is that scientists, using their from-the-outside, third-person methods, can tell you things about your own consciousness that you would never dream of, and that, in fact, you're not the authority on your own consciousness that you think you are. And we're really making a lot of progress on coming up with a theory of mind."

In many of his writings, he talks about why it's "like anything" to be a human, in other words, why we have a conscious experience. He has described the contents of consciousness as being a "user illusion", rather like a computer desktop, with lots of icons that represent things that are actually a great deal more complicated and not like the icons at all.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Do you have evidence of it being anywhere other than it emanating from complex brains?

What is the evidence that it does?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Not really, no. He argues that many aspects of it are not at all how they appear from the "inside". There's a TED talk by him called The Illusion of Consciousness, complete with a transcript, in which he doesn't use the word illusion once. It's an eye-catching title but not really what he's getting at exactly. Here's an extract from where he's summing up:-

"What I wanted to show you is that scientists, using their from-the-outside, third-person methods, can tell you things about your own consciousness that you would never dream of, and that, in fact, you're not the authority on your own consciousness that you think you are. And we're really making a lot of progress on coming up with a theory of mind."

In many of his writings, he talks about why it's "like anything" to be a human, in other words, why we have a conscious experience. He has described the contents of consciousness as being a "user illusion", rather like a computer desktop, with lots of icons that represent things that are actually a great deal more complicated and not like the icons at all.

So let's get this straight.
He gives a talk called The illusion of consciousness
But he doesn't use the word illusion in it.
And so that makes me wrong about Dennett saying consciousness is an illusion.
Then he talks of User illusion.
So how can I be wrong and right about Dennett? Answers on a postcard.

While everyone antitheist here is patting themselves on how bamboozlingly smart they've been. Who or what is the user that has been illuded?

[Sebastian Toe]

What is the evidence that it does?

Where is the evidence that it doesn't?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Where is the evidence that it doesn't?

Apparently it's an illusion.

[Stranger]

So let's get this straight.
[blah, blah, blah]

I gave you a brief explanation, including a quote from his summing up, which you totally ignored, so I really don't see why I should bother trying to explain further. If you have any smidgen of genuine interest you could watch the talk, which is a great deal shorter and more entertaining than Feser's long-winded nonsense. In fact, there's an even shorter summary here (in which he does describe various aspects as "sort of" an illusion): Daniel Dennett - How are Brains Conscious? (just over 12 minutes).

And, as I said, there are many ideas here and nobody has a tested theory of consciousness, so we actually don't know. I just explained why I found some speculations more convincing than others. If you're not interested in Dennett's ideas, and want to just dismiss them, then fine.

[Stranger]

What is the evidence that it does?

Well, for starters, if you administer a a general anesthetic it goes away. If brains get damaged, so do conscious minds. This list of such evidence is quite extensive.

[Sebastian Toe]

Apparently it's an illusion.

Do you concur with that description?

[Sriram]

Well, for starters, if you administer a a general anesthetic it goes away. If brains get damaged, so do conscious minds. This list of such evidence is quite extensive.

But that is just the conscious mind (wakefulness or sense awareness).  We know through somnambulism that the unconscious mind continues to function even when the conscious mind is unaware.

We also know that the unconscious mind which is about 90%, lies below the surface....and has a major role in our decisions and functioning. The conscious mind is only the front end.   

[Stranger]

But that is just the conscious mind (wakefulness or sense awareness).

That was the subject I was addressing.

We also know that the unconscious mind which is about 90%, lies below the surface....and has a major role in our decisions and functioning. The conscious mind is only the front end.

Indeed, and one of Dennett's ideas is that the distinction between the two isn't quite as clear cut as it seems, which is why he refers to some aspects of consciousness being a kind of illusion. The link in #14 says more about it.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Do you concur with that description?

You and Dennett can't seem to do it even though you floated it and now you are expecting me to agree?
What with? It's an illusion of it's a sort of illusion that isn't quite an illusion?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Well, for starters, if you administer a a general anesthetic it goes away. If brains get damaged, so do conscious minds. This list of such evidence is quite extensive.

Where does it go?

[Stranger]

Where does it go?

I guess playing word games is easier than addressing the point.   

[Sebastian Toe]

You and Dennett can't seem to do it even though you floated it and now you are expecting me to agree?

Where have I expected you to agree?
I asked if you did, to which I expected an answer. Well from you I guess, expecting an answer is maybe wishful thinking.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Where have I expected you to agree?
I asked if you did, to which I expected an answer. Well from you I guess, expecting an answer is maybe wishful thinking.

Sorry I mistook you for NTTS. Many apologies.

[Sebastian Toe]

Sorry I mistook you for NTTS. Many apologies.

...no worries, carry on Pike!