The Evolutionary Hotseat

[extropalopakettle]

[Zarriar]

~bump~

[Hitler's Missing Nut]

Ja, Zarrier, was is est?

[Fried Egg]

quote:

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Not only can't we devise a scientific experiment that demonstrates consciousness exists in humans, we can't even begin to conceive how it might be possible.

The question of where on the evolutionary scale from microbe to man consciousness appeared doesn't interest me. There are far more interesting questions.

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Well, demonstrating that it exists objectively (should we ever do so) would be the first step in understanding how and why it came about in evolutionary terms.

[extropalopakettle]

Maybe I'm being redundant, but here's the part that fascinates me:

I can imagine the universe having been different ("what if"). I can imagine, let's say, a universe that had different laws of physics. If that were the case, the universe would be different than it is now. I can imagine a universe with the same laws of physics as those that we know, and also the same laws as those we don't yet know, but with the exception that "consciousness" does not emerge (this presumes that consciousness has no effect on the physical - that it's sort of a causal "dead end", an effect, but not a cause). If that were the case, the universe would be the same as it is now, from the objective point of view. There would be people, some scientists, using instruments to take measurements, and devising and testing theories, and publishing papers and writing books. And some philosophers, discussing whatever, icluding consciousness (which doesn't exist). We would be here, having and reading these exact same words, saying the same things, claiming to understand this talk about "subjective experience", but never actually having any subjective experience. Nothing would be different, except that there'd be no consciousness of anything. From a subjective point of view, it would be no different than if nothing existed at all.

I have this strange sense that it's better this way, with consciousness. And yet, my counterpart in that imaginary other universe, devoid of consciousness, would have said the exact same thing: I have this strange sense that it's better this way, with consciousness.

[Fried Egg]

Extro

Some would argue that consiousness is an innevitable consequence of the laws of physics (as they are).

However, until we discover an objective means of detecting consiousness (and it's physical causes) we can but speculate.

I think it is just a matter of time until we do. Afterall, we know we have consiousness, right? It has occurred at least once. Why should it not then re-occur?

And to suggest that it is not a consequence of the laws of physics raises even more unanswered questions...

[extropalopakettle]

[Aarondalf]

One could argrue that all the colour green is, is an acknowledgement or acceptance that light of a certain wavelength was recieved by the eye.

[extropalopakettle]

How? I mean, how could one argue that? I'd love to hear the argument.

People can have the subjective experience of seeing the color green without their being any light (such as in dreaming, electrical stimulation of parts of the brain, or drug induced hallucination), and without them having to understand the concept of light and wavelengths.

What is an "acknowledgement" or "acceptance", physically? If you could see every physical thing happening inside someones brain - every nerve impulse - would you ever be able to see this acknowledgement or acceptance? If so, it's not a subjective experience, or evidence of one. You can argue all you like that it is, or that the two correspond, but you can never test the hypothesis.

And what is doing this acknowledging or accepting? My nervous system? OK. Why should that nervous activity produce a subjective experience of the color green?

You might be able to define what you mean by this "acknowledgement" or "acceptance" in terms of some neurological events, but you can't define the subjective experience of the color green to be that, because we already know what the subjective experience of the color green is. We know it, we see it, we experience it, every day. To define it to be something else is simply to say "I can't deal with it, so let's switch to a different problem, and deal with that". Fine.

BTW, again, David Chalmers paper Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, and his home page, for anyone up for some light reading.

[Samadhi]

Oh man! The colors, man!
*cough*
*cough*
*cough*

[Fried Egg]

Extro

If you're arguing that consiousness does not have physical causes and has no effect on the physical world, why is it there attall? Why am I consious? I guess that means that free-will is an illusion...

However, I seem to subjectively experience physical occurences. I feel pain when I bang my arm on the table. Why? Why should I experience by body's interaction with the physical world if my consiousness is detached from reality as you suppose?

It makes sense, from an evolutionary point of view that consiousness has developed due to the survival advantage it gives us. OK, we can't explain how it has developed but we can understand the evolutionary advantage of having it, if it affects our behaviour.

Why is it that we should experience senstations of existance attall if it is purely metaphysical? I can see no reason for it? Even the religous, who contend the spiritual nature of the soul and consiousness believe that we have free-will and therefore that our consiousness must interact physically with our body.

To me, it would represent a deeper mystery to assume that consiousness is entirely metaphysical than to assume it is merely a physical phenomena that we are yet to come close to understanding.

[extropalopakettle]

[Fried Egg]

Extro

[Aarondalf]

Originally posted by extro:

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"People can have the subjective experience of seeing the color green without their being any light (such as in dreaming, electrical stimulation of parts of the brain, or drug induced hallucination), and without them having to understand the concept of light and wavelengths."

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Yes people can still "see" green if they are halucinating but the brain still recieves the input signal of green from somewhere. It might not necessarily be from light... but at some stage, the input is there.

I am with Fried Egg on this. I cannot see how a metaphysical consciousness could possibly affect the physical. That doesnt mean that it cant, but until I read of hear something showing how it could occur then I will look for another explanation.

Originally posted by extro:

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"But I have to at least consider the possibility that free will is an illusion, while I can't consider that consciousness is an illusion. Depending, of course, on how one defines "illusion". Consciousness includes the experienceing of hallucinations, and those would be considered "illusions" by some, but on another level, they are real."

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I think we can safely say that on some level, hallucinations are real. But I dont see why you cant consider consciouness to be an illusion. Pardon the pun, but I believe that is a very real possibility. I cant prove it one way or the other, but it seems to me that the whole is NOT greater than the sum of the parts... it only appears that way because we dont know enough about the brain and as Fried Egg put it, we dont yet know what we are looking for.

Originally posted by extro:

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"unlike in a way that nothing else has been unlike anything else before."

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That has to be the best sentence ever. I really mean that. =^_^=



[This message has been edited by Aarondalf (edited 08-29-2002 08:36 PM).]

[Hitchhiker]

If you had never seen the physical color of green, would you be able to see it in dreams, mystic visions, drug-induced hallucinations, etc.? I always assumed that such experiences triggered your memory of the color green -- that they didn't actually "create" green in your head.

[Aarondalf]

Hitchhiker - I dont know if you would be able to dream in colour if you had sever seen it, but I think extro is saying that there is more to the experience of color than just triggering something in memory. At first glance that seems to be the case, but I am not entirely sure that the experience of green is nothing more than a complex illusion. I hope to be proven wrong.

[Hitchhiker]

Actually, I suppose there is no such thing as "green" existing in nature. "Green" is the word we use to describe what the eye sees when a certain wavelength of light strikes it. And when we duplicate that experience in dreams or hallucinations, we call that "green" too. But no object is actually "green" in itself. It's one of those tree-falls-in-forest things: objects reflect back light of different wavelengths, but it isn't a "color" until somebody sees it.

[Aarondalf]

True, there is no such thing as the colour green, just different wavelengths of light.

On to the original topic of evolution, has anyone read the current Scientific American? It has a whole article on what to say to stupid creationists when they spew forth their rediculous arguments. It also says that 60% of high school students in the US believe in creation, 40% of college students, and 30% of professors. Scary huh?

[extropalopakettle]

Originally posted by Fried Egg:

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I think that if consiousness is even partly metaphysical, it does indeed deepen the mystery.
Say, for arguments sake, there is a metaphysical consiousness and a physical brain. How exactly do these affect each other? How can something physical affect something metaphysical (and vise versa)? That is the mystery that the notion of a metaphysical (or even partly metaphysical) consoiusness brings.

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Originally posted by Aarondalf:

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I am with Fried Egg on this. I cannot see how a metaphysical consciousness could possibly affect the physical.

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Let me point out that I never used the term "metaphysical" until I responded to Fried Egg's use of it, and then only to say, of consciousness: If it's metaphysical, it's still quite real. Because I'm not sure what "metaphysical" really means, and the point is, consciousness is real (we could start to quibble about what "real" means too). If metaphysical implies not real, consciousness is not metaphysical, but I'm not sure what the word implies, so I've avoided it.

Something being physical, on the other hand, would seem to imply there being some evidence for it's existence, if it doesn't imply outright observeability.

Originally posted by Aarondalf:

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But I dont see why you cant consider consciouness to be an illusion.

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Again, we'd have to come to a common understanding of what we're saying when we say "illusion". I don't know that it would matter. There are things called "optical illusions", and these can be explained without resorting to the notion of consciousness. They have causes and effects. They are a kind of visual mismeasurement - a line appears curved when it is actually straight. You can build machines that process visual information that would be subject to those same "optical illusions", but which would have no subjective experience, as far as we know. If consciousness is an "illusion", whatever that means, it makes it not in the least bit something to be explained.

And again, without that illusion, being a living human would be no different than non-existence, from a personal point of view. There'd be no personal point of view.

Originally posted by Aarondalf:

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... as Fried Egg put it, we dont yet know what we are looking for.

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Yes, he put it that way a few times, and quite frankly, I don't know what that means. If we knew what we were looking for, we wouldn't need to look for it - the problem would be solved. We'd know that consciousness is some particular physical phenomena/event/whatever. But how could we possibly know that? We don't know what consciousnes is, we don't know what subjective experiences are made of, and we can't even construct a fictional incorrect but at least imaginably sensible explanation of a connection between the physical world as we know it and the world of our subjective experiences. We can't possibly know what we're looking for without having already solved the problem.

Originally posted by Hitchhiker:

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"Green" is the word we use to describe what the eye sees when a certain wavelength of light strikes it.

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"Green" is used to mean many things, including, but not exclusively:
- a property of an object or substance that reflects or emits light of a particular wavelength (green paint, a green light),
- light of a particular wavelength
- the nervous response of a normal human visual system when the retina is struck by "green" light
- nervous activity in the brain similar to the above, though perhaps having a different cause
- the subjective experience we commonly have when we see something green

Originally posted by Aarondalf:

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True, there is no such thing as the colour green, just different wavelengths of light.

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The subjective experience exists, independent of light. There is such a thing. We know it with far greater certainty than we know there is such a thing as light or wavelengths. Light, wavelengths - these are theories. We don't experience them directly. We infer their existence from our subjective experiences.

There is such a thing, it is inexplicable, and denying it's very obvious existence is a common tactic of those who have a firm but unfounded belief that everything in the world has a scientific explanation, whether known yet or not.

Originally posted by Aarondalf:

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At first glance that seems to be the case, but I am not entirely sure that the experience of green is nothing more than a complex illusion.

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Again, calling it an "illusion", no matter how complex, makes it no less something to be explained. And calling it an illusion is pointless if we can't say what the significance of that is. What would the implications of that be?

[Navigator]

Just wanted to say that I like this thread, and I was hoping you'd discuss evolution vs. creation more. I think since this is a puzzle website, most of the people who come to this site are scientific people and they already believe in evolution. If any GLers know any people who firmly believe in creation, tell them about this thread, so we can get a debate going.

[Aarondalf]

I use illusion in this sense:

You seem firm in the belief that it is *obvious* that we have subjective experiences. To such an extent that it is the *only* thing we can be sure exists, no? If this was NOT true, and consciousness was observable and explainable then any sense of subjective experience would in fact, be an illusion. (Of course, being something completely different to an optical illusion, or hallucination).

Originally posted by extro:

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"There is such a thing, it is inexplicable, and denying it's very obvious existence is a common tactic of those who have a firm but unfounded belief that everything in the world has a scientific explanation, whether known yet or not."

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I will agree, my belief is unfounded. All I can go on is the fact that there are many things that we dont know, and cannot even begin to understand. I dont, however, see how this leads to the conclusion that we will never be able to understand these things. And I dont use any sort of tactic in denying it. I have heard the argument of the other side, and I dont agree. There is nothing for me to gain in believing one side or the other (and even if there was, I would not and could not believe for that reason) so why would I take one side unless I truly believed it. Could you please tell me how your side of the arguement is in any way at all "founded" though?

And remember, not so long ago is was very obvious that the sun revolved around the earth.

[Aarondalf]

Navigator: Apart from Anonymous Creationist, I think the closest that you will find is Arminger... and he swings both ways. =^_~=

[Fried Egg]

Extro

By "metaphysical", I mean something that has no observable or detectable behaviour in the physical world. Like a spirit or a soul.

If we can sense it, or rig up some sort of apparatas that can detect it in some way, it is physical.

[Aarondalf]

Avery nice book for anyone to read is "Consilience". The author is a firm believer in Complicity (which incidently is another great book to read. By Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen IIRC) which is the idea of complex results stemming from simlple causes, and uses this idea to show how everything can be explained. While you may not agree with it, it is a very compelling and thought provoking read.

One chapter looks at the mind and the idea of self experience, concluding that there is no back seat driver, no centre of the brain which forms consiousness.

The implications are that there is no such thing as free will. Either everything can be determined or everything is random. However, humans cant comprehend this idea because you will never be able to make a machine that could look even a microsecond into the future... and so for all intents and purposes, we do have free will.

I havent read it for a long time, so I will get it out later and put up some quotes.

[extropalopakettle]

Originally posted by Aarondalf:

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You seem firm in the belief that it is *obvious* that we have subjective experiences.

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Mind boggling - truly and utterly mind boggling. Not necessarily "we". I do. Maybe you don't. In reply 175 you agreed with Borodog that his dog has consciousness. Now you seem to be questioning that people do.

Originally posted by Aarondalf:

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To such an extent that it is the *only* thing we can be sure exists, no?

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How do I know that gravity exists, for instance? I have a lifetime of subjective experiences, and in all of them, the things I perceive as objects behave according to a pattern that is consistent with this theory that there is gravity.

How do I know that objects exist? I can see them, touch and feel them, clack them together and hear the sound they make. But, according to everything we know through science, all of those experiences are happening completely inside my head. If my hand gets hurt, my hand does not really feel it (as far as we know). A signal travels from my hand to my brain, and somewhere in there, there is the experience of "pain in hand".

I am "sure" gravity and objects exist. We can start to quibble over the meaning of "exist". Let's not. But subjective experiences are more certain.

Originally posted by Aarondalf:

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If this was NOT true, and consciousness was observable and explainable then any sense of subjective experience would in fact, be an illusion.

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No, not at all. How do you come to that conclusion? And, BTW, this was all prefaced by "I use illusion in this sense:" - this is supposed to explain what you mean by "illusion". I don't get it.

Originally posted by Aarondalf:

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All I can go on is the fact that there are many things that we dont know, and cannot even begin to understand. I dont, however, see how this leads to the conclusion that we will never be able to understand these things.

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It doesn't lead to that conclusion. Name one (or several) of these things, and I'll try to make it clear why consciousness is a completely different kind of problem.

With all those other things you're thinking of, you can at least test a theory, to see if it's consistent with observed results. But you can't test a theory about consciousness, as you can't observe consciousness or evidence of its effects or existence.

Originally posted by Aarondalf:

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And I dont use any sort of tactic in denying it.

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Calling subjective experience an illusion, saying "there is no such thing as the colour green, just different wavelengths of light", when in fact I can have the subjective experience of seeing the color green in the complete abscence of light - this get's pretty damn close to denial of your own experience.

Originally posted by Aarondalf:

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I have heard the argument of the other side, and I dont agree. ...
Could you please tell me how your side of the arguement is in any way at all "founded" though?

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What I said was unfounded was the firm belief that everything in the world has a scientific explanation, whether known yet or not. I say it isn't so. Justification: Science deals with the observeable and the testable. Subjective experience is inherently unobserveable. If you invented a machine or technique that could allow one person (an observing scientist, let's say) observe the subjective experiences of another person or thing, how would you know it actually works? You couldn't. And the "we don't know what we're looking for, that's why we can't see it" argument fails completely, because that's precisely the problem - to know what it is to look for.

Originally posted by Aarondalf:

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And remember, not so long ago is was very obvious that the sun revolved around the earth.

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Originally posted by David Chalmers, in an article you should read:

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This might seem reminiscent of the vitalist claim that no physical account could explain life, but the cases are disanalogous. What drove vitalist skepticism was doubt about whether physical mechanisms could perform the many remarkable functions associated with life, such as complex adaptive behavior and reproduction. The conceptual claim that explanation of functions is what is needed was implicitly accepted, but lacking detailed knowledge of biochemical mechanisms, vitalists doubted whether any physical process could do the job and put forward the hypothesis of the vital spirit as an alternative explanation. Once it turned out that physical processes could perform the relevant functions, vitalist doubts melted away.

With experience, on the other hand, physical explanation of the functions is not in question. The key is instead the conceptual point that the explanation of functions does not suffice for the explanation of experience. This basic conceptual point is not something that further neuroscientific investigation will affect. In a similar way, experience is disanalogous to the élan vital. The vital spirit was put forward as an explanatory posit, in order to explain the relevant functions, and could therefore be discarded when those functions were explained without it. Experience is not an explanatory posit but an explanandum in its own right, and so is not a candidate for this sort of elimination.

It is tempting to note that all sorts of puzzling phenomena have eventually turned out to be explainable in physical terms. But each of these were problems about the observable behavior of physical objects, coming down to problems in the explanation of structures and functions. Because of this, these phenomena have always been the kind of thing that a physical account might explain, even if at some points there have been good reasons to suspect that no such explanation would be forthcoming. The tempting induction from these cases fails in the case of consciousness, which is not a problem about physical structures and functions. The problem of consciousness is puzzling in an entirely different way. An analysis of the problem shows us that conscious experience is just not the kind of thing that a wholly reductive account could succeed in explaining.

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Originally posted by Fried Egg:

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By "metaphysical", I mean something that has no observable or detectable behaviour in the physical world. Like a spirit or a soul.

If we can sense it, or rig up some sort of apparatas that can detect it in some way, it is physical.

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So what is the subjective experience of the color green - physical or metaphysical? I can sense it, but I may not be a purely physical apparatus.

[extropalopakettle]

[Fried Egg]

Extro

[Aarondalf]

Originally posted by extro:

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"Originally posted by Aarondalf:
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You seem firm in the belief that it is *obvious* that we have subjective experiences.
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Mind boggling - truly and utterly mind boggling. Not necessarily "we". I do. Maybe you don't. In reply 175 you agreed with Borodog that his dog has consciousness. Now you seem to be questioning that people do."

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I understand your problem with 'us' having consciousness and not just 'I' or 'you'. I was however, only making a generalisation. To you, it is only certain that you have consiousness. To me, it is only certain that I do. To someone else it is only certain that they do. Generalising was just a poor choice on my part. I would hope that you would be able to see that.

And about the dog. When I say consciousness, I mean the illusion of consciousness. The dog has it to the same extent that I have it. The problem is that you keep reading my arguments in terms of your parameters... and is why I would rather debate this in person, or at least in real time. Things tend to be taken out of context to easily.

Illusion might not be the best word either. All I am trying to say is that consciousness is not what it appears to be. One might think that there is a passive driver sitting back and watching or interpreting everything that the physical body does (like a soul) but really all there is, is the physical components of the brain.

Originally posted by extro:

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"Calling subjective experience an illusion, saying "there is no such thing as the colour green, just different wavelengths of light", when in fact I can have the subjective experience of seeing the color green in the complete abscence of light - this get's pretty damn close to denial of your own experience."

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I thought I had addressed the point about seeing things in the complete absence of light. Anyway, had you never seen the colour green, could you imagine it? Im a bit to tired right now to give that the response it deserves.

[extropalopakettle]

[Aarondalf]

Originally posted by extro:

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"If you invented a machine or technique that could allow one person (an observing scientist, let's say) observe the subjective experiences of another person or thing, how would you know it actually works?"

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Dont know what you think of this, but I think it could be done with a bit of lateral thinking. Have three people. Person 1 experiences something. Person 2 uses the machine to "experience" what person 1 does. Person 3 uses another machine to iteratively experience what persons 1 & 2 do. There are some problems with this, and in the end its impossible to say exactly *what* the 1st person is experiencing, but if person 3 experiences the same thing twice then you would have to conclude that consciousness is at least entirely physical...

I have to think about it a bit more, sure there are problems with this.

[Aarondalf]

Or you could do it like this:

Two people use machines to experience one other person. Then another person gets fed the experiences of the two guys, alternating between them. If you get a smooth stream of consciousness, then the machine should work. Of course, it cant *describe* what each of the people is feeling, but it can predict what they should be feeling.

I do see the problem though: You cant actually describe ones subjective experiences. You can show why we have them, and predict them, but can never have any degree of certainty that what *I* experience when faced with the input of green is the same as your experience. In fact, you cant even prove that the other person experiences anything at all. But this (to me) is the same problem as with any other indirectly observable phenomenon.

Oh, and I disagree with the idea of a universe in which we are doing what we are doing, but without experiencing it. I dont think that is possible. Consciousness (IMO) stems from completely physical properties, so to remove consciousness you have to alter the physical, hence not everything is the same. This may seem to go against some of my previous postings but that is only because I am using different definitions of words than I was before.

[extropalopakettle]

[Aarondalf]

Can you please tell me why the machine idea wouldnt work? I will admit I havent thought about it a great deal, but I would rather you give reasons than just dismiss it. Also, can you rephrase the last couple of sentences? For the life of me I cant understand them... maybe they are ok and I am just too tired.

I also think there is a flaw in the altered universe logic, but I will wait till morning to post more.

[Borodog]

Extro,

Perhaps you should go around in circles the other way for a while. Maybe that will help.



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Insert humorous sig here.

[Gomez]

[HIJACK]

Hey boro, have you looked at my latest creative writing thread? Click on my sig, it's a link to the thread. I think you might like it.

[/HIJACK]

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Ever wanted to write the Great American Novel? How about part of it?

[Borodog]

I do like it, Gomez, but this:

[Coyote]

And yet another 'hijacking', though I'm not sure if I should even bother, since the forces of natural selection seem to have transformed this into a 'nature of consciousness' thread. Incontrovertible proof of evolution!

Anyway. A recent Straight Dope column mentioned 'junk DNA', and gave a brief description of what it was. So at least I know its definition now (I'd heard the term before but wasn't really sure what it meant).

But why do we even have junk DNA? Did these sections once serve a purpose, or have they always been junk? Is it possible for such parts to someday become 'useful'?

[Aarondalf]

quote=extro]"Imagine a universe just like ours, but with very slightly different physical laws. All the physical laws we know of are the same. And all the physical laws which have objectively observeable affects are the same. What's different about these physical laws then? Maybe nothing. Or maybe it is different in that the unknown and unknowable physical laws in our universe which produce consciousness, but which have no observeable effect (i.e. those laws have no observeable effect, nor does the consciousness they produce), these laws do not exist in this other universe. What would be different? Everything observeable would be the same."[/quote]

Here you are to be saying that consciousness is producted by unknown physical laws. Wouldnt it have been easier to just say metaphysical laws? But anyway, on the most basic level you are just taking the other side of an argument which has no real basis. I could ask you the same question, are your beliefs based on something religious?

Well, no, there is no religous grounds for my argument. At the moment there really isnt anything for me to grab either way. And while I do agree that one cannot accurately *describe* ones self experience I dont agree that this means we cant find the mechanism that *produces* the experience. They are, in my opinion, different problems.

If consciousness is indeed metaphyisical like you say, then yes, the other universe could very well exist. But to me it just seems like the same type of reason behind why we conjured up gods in the first place. Just infinitely more informed, intelligent and refined.

[extropalopakettle]

I'm not saying consciousness is produced by known or unknown physical or metaphysical laws.

I am saying consciousness is not a logical consequence of the known physical laws (as just about everything else is), and is not a logical consequence of any set of describable physical laws. This is not a "religious" belief. Physical laws as we know them are describable, and their logical consequences are describable, whereas subjective experiences are not describable.

[Fried Egg]

Extro