The Evolutionary Hotseat

[Mikko]

What is the evolutionary explanation for consciousness?

[extropalopakettle]

Good to see Mikko back (yeah, we disagreed on some things in the past, but that doesn't mean we didn't like the guy). And I was going to ask that question, but, to properly convey it, as I think of it (the question), takes a bit of work.

Why is it that the subjective experiences of things which are good for the survival of ones genes actually feel good? And the subjective experiences of things which are bad for the survival of ones genes actually feel bad.

If I have the neural mechanisms that cause me to behave a certain way, that is all that should matter. As long as my nervous system drives me to eat when I need to, rest when I need to, and have sex, and makes me avoid injuring myself, would it matter if the subjective experiences associated with food, rest and sex were painful, and the subjective experiences associated with being injured were pleasurable?

Given two kinds of organisms, both like us in that they have the neural mechanisms that cause them to do things which help their genes survive, and avoid things which lessen the chances of their genes surviving, but different in one regard: one kind has negative subjective experiences associated with the beneficial things that it's nervous system makes it do, while the other has positive experiences associated with those same things ... so, given those two kinds of organisms, does one have a selective advantage over the other?

And to make this clearer, let me point out that you wouldn't be able to discern between the two. Imagine a person who goes through life and, by all observations of his behavior, appears to be much like any other person. But subjective experiences - negative and positive - are reversed. When they have sex, they smile and carry on about how great it was (their nervous systems produce that behavior), but the subjective experience of the act which they are driven to perform is horribly displeasing. Similarly for good food. And they avoid injuries (their nervous systems take care of that avoidance behavior), but on the occasions when they do get injured, they experience, subjectively, intense pleasure, although they behave like you or I when in great pain. Now, realize, that if your best friend were such a person, you'd never know. Because you don't know their subjective experiences, but can only observe the outward behavior produced by their nervous systems. We really can't say that there aren't countless people like this, all around us. We can conjecture. But we can't conjure up a shred of evidence that makes sense scientifically.

My point is that any scientific explanation of how human (or other organism) behavior is determined will not - and can not - make reference to the notions of subjective experiences which are pleasurable or painful. It can not, because such things can't be observed or measured by science, nor even can any evidence of their existence.

Yet I know, that for me personally, my subjective experiences of sex, food, rest - are all pleasurable, and my subjective experiences of injury are displeasing. Of course, an adequate theory of mind will explain how my nervous system comes up with claims like that last sentence, whether or not it's actually true.

So, is there a selective advantage to it being true?

If not, why do the subjective experiences - positive and negative - of members of our species correlate in that way with the things that their nervous systems make them seek or avoid? Or is it just me that enjoys that fortuitous correlation?

[Coyote]

Originally posted by extro:

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And they avoid injuries (their nervous systems take care of that avoidance behavior), but on the occasions when they do get injured, they experience, subjectively, intense pleasure, although they behave like you or I when in great pain.

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I'm not sure I understand what you mean here regarding avoiding injuries. Are you talking about the 'hot stove' reflex, (the hand touching the hot stove is automatically jerked away before the pain/pleasure signal even reaches the brain)? Or do you mean we have some sort of hard-wired aversion to placing ourselves in injurious situations (we avoid touching the stove in the first place)?

[Lucky Wizard]

How do you feel about Alan Thorne's "Regional continuity" theory?

(For those who don't know what that is and would like to learn - check the most recent issue of Discover magazine.)

[extropalopakettle]

Originally posted by Coyote:

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Originally posted by me:

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And they avoid injuries (their nervous systems take care of that avoidance behavior), but on the occasions when they do get injured, they experience, subjectively, intense pleasure, although they behave like you or I when in great pain.

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I'm not sure I understand what you mean here regarding avoiding injuries. Are you talking about the 'hot stove' reflex, (the hand touching the hot stove is automatically jerked away before the pain/pleasure signal even reaches the brain)? Or do you mean we have some sort of hard-wired aversion to placing ourselves in injurious situations (we avoid touching the stove in the first place)?

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Either, both. Whether we are preconfigured to avoid certain injuries/harms instinctively, or whether we learn from experience - both are relevent to the example. Let's take the learned example, only because it can be more deceptive. You mention a "pleasure/pain signal". It is important to understand that it is just a signal, and any adequate theory of how the nervous system works will explain how the nervous system responds to that signal, without hypothesizing unobservable and unevidenced things like subjective pleasure/pain experiences. So a young child puts his hand on the hot stove, and first, a hard-wired reflex causes him to immediately withdraw his hand, but not soon enough to avoid injury. Then, second, a "pain signal" travels to his brain, and initiates a chain of events which leads to a change in his neural hardware and/or software (it's an arbitrary distinction - it's all matter, and thus hardware) which causes him, in the future, to avoid touching the hot stove. That "pain signal" may also initiate a chain of events which leads to the boy crying, saying "Ow, it hurts, kiss it, Mommy", etc. Any adequate theory of how the human nervous system works will explain how these behaviors are produced from the observeable lower level functional building blocks of neural behavior. The question is, what is the boys subjective experience of the event? Does he have one? If so, is it painful, or pleasurable? How can one tell? All we can do is observe behavior. And our (someday) adequate theory of how the nervous system works explains such behavior, in a scientific way, without resorting to unexplainable phenomena which we have no evidence even exist, such as "subjective experience". Yes, we may locate some neurons, or patterns of activation of neurons, that we will label as corresponding to painful subjective experiences, because whenever they are activated, they in turn, in a very mechanistic and explainable way, trigger neural events that produce behaviors we normally associate with painful experiences. Similarly for pleasurable or any other kind of subjective experiences. But we have no way of observing or measuring any subjective experiences. We can't know what the subjective experience is of someone who's "pain center" is activated - we can only observe that the pain center is activated. Nor can we posit how these unobserveable subjective experiences might matter - how they might affect the functioning of the nervous system, and thus affect behavior. The young boy may have no subjective experience of the hand-burning event, or may have pleasurable ones, or painful ones. We can't really tell.

But I know that I have such subjective experiences of all sorts of things, and furthermore, that they are genuinely pleasurable or painful, in a fortunate way, in that the painful subjective experiences are associated with the events my nervous system has me avoid, while the pleasurable subjective experiences are associated with the events that my nervous system has me seek and find, and that enhance my chances of survival.

I'm just wondering if anyone can speculate as to a selective advantage to that particular kind of correlation between neural happenings and subjective experiences, or am I just lucky that it's that way for me?

[Bicho the Inhaler]

extro, what you're really asking is whether one of these situations is more likely:

(1) Organisms develop "consciousness" that helps them survive by directing the organism's behavior in intelligent ways.

(2) Organisms develop complex behavior that would seem to indicate an intelligent being "at home" yet are devoid of consciousness directing their actions. However, trapped inside the organism there actually is a conscious being whose thoughts, desires, etc. have no bearing whatsoever on the behavior of the organism, but who may experience the world through the senses of the organism.

In all your examples it seems like you're suggesting that the conscious part of you would be completely disconnected from your behavior. I don't think such consciousness would be likely to come about through evolution because it's completely superfluous; it doesn't help the organism survive.

[extropalopakettle]

[Coyote]

Borodog, my apologies for being a co-instigator of this hijacking, but the subject is an interesting one, and parts of it do have some relevance to the question of selection.

extro, I'd like to return to the pain/pleasure idea, because I don't think I'm in agreement with you here. First off (bolding added):

Originally posted by extro:

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Then, second, a "pain signal" travels to his brain, and initiates a chain of events which leads to a change in his neural hardware and/or software (it's an arbitrary distinction - it's all matter, and thus hardware) which causes him, in the future, to avoid touching the hot stove.

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The use of the word 'pain' here is kind of a reverse 'begging the question', since the tone of your post seems to suggest you feel the 'pain' signal is simply a signal until the brain stamps it with it's particular subjective interpretation. Is my understanding correct here? I'm not trying to drag this issue down into semantics, I just want to make sure we're both 'on the same page'.

The point where I start to disagree with you is in the last part of the above quote, coupled with this question:

Originally posted by extro:

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The question is, what is the boys subjective experience of the event? Does he have one? If so, is it painful, or pleasurable?

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The jerking away of the hand in the first place is a hardwired response (it doesn't even make it all the way to the brain!), but an aversion to touching the stove again would be a learned response, and I don't see how a subjective interpretation of the experiance as 'pleasurable' would serve as an incentive to avoid the situation in the future. After all, there's certainly enough examples around of we Humans knowingly doing things harmful or potentially harmful, simply because we regard those activities as pleasurable.

To tie it in with the idea of natural selection, I would say that, amongst creatures that depended to some degree on learned responses, selection would favor those that interpreted signals from injurious situations as 'painful', since that would be the best way to cause them to avoid similar situations in the future.




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The Grey Labyrinth--a maze of little twisty Passages, all different.

[Bicho the Inhaler]

extro, I was contrasting the situation in which consciousness correlates with experience and directs behavior with the situation in which consciousness does not correlate with experience and thus does not direct behavior. That was to refute your examples of actually suffering while outwardly expressing pleasure. I was saying that once we make the assumption of consciousness evolving, consciousness correlating with experience is really the only way it makes sense.

As to why subjective experience exists at all, I don't claim to know the answer.

A possibility is that subjective experience is inevitable in systems that are sufficiently complex and have certain attributes. We "feel" because the nervous systems in animals kept evolving to be more complex. This is deliberately vague. If we want to talk about this more maybe we should start a new thread since this is no longer an "ask Borodog" type situation.

[extropalopakettle]

Originally posted by Coyote:

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Borodog, my apologies for being a co-instigator of this hijacking, but the subject is an interesting one, and parts of it do have some relevance to the question of selection.

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I don't see it as hijacking. It's a question about how we came to be what we are. Evolution is supposed to answer that.

[Borodog]

Sheesh, you go away for the weekend . . .

Mikko: What is the evolutionary explanation for consciousness?

OK. This will be involved. First things first, a response to extro's thoughts.

No offense, extro (because I respect you and your arguments greatly), but I really hate that line of argument. Let's see if I can explain why. Then I'll get to what I think the evolutionary explanation of consciousness is.

Rather than being a philosopher, I am a physicist. Two of the greatest things that physicists have ever came up with, in my humble opinion, are the principles of homogeneity, and isotropy. Generally, these are applied to the cosmos. The principle of homogeneity says that there is no "special" place or places in the cosmos, the universe's structure (on the large scale) looks more or less the same no matter where you are. The related but distinct principle of isotropy says that the universe's structure (on the large scale) looks more or less the same no matter where you look, thus there is no preferred direction in the universe.

What do these have to do with a discussion on consciousness? Well I like to apply these two principles not just to the universe, but to human beings. This is, in fact, that basis for my system of morals (which is entirely dreived, independant of any scriptural "revelation," just so you know). Here's what I mean. *I* have consciousness, period. This is an observable fact (for me). Am I special in some way that the rest of humanity is not? From what I can tell (as far as the extent of the current topic, i.e. consciousness), I am not. There are two hypotheticals here. One is that I am not special, and that everyone who appears to exhibit consciousness actually does. The other is that somehow I (and possibly some others) are somehow "special," that we get to "experience" an integrated sensorium, "thoughts," "decision making," etc, while the rest of humanity are somehow mindless automatons, with heads full of switchboard wiring, plugging this stimulus into that response.

First, the two principles I've mentioned, supported by a judicious shave with Occam's Razor, favor the first hypothesis. I do not appear to be special in anyway. I would have to assume that I am particularly, spectacularly special to posit that I, and I alone (ok, and maybe extro) have the "gift" of "consciousness" while the rest of you are just really complicated Aibos. It is much simpler to ASSUME (yes, assume) that since I've got it, so does everyone. Second, and here is the important part, what good is it to posit the second hypothesis? What, other than obfuscatory philosophical wrestling, does it allow you to do? What does such a hypothesis answer? Nothing. In, fact, it erects a mind-boggling (if you actually have a mind in there, Roboboy) conundrum: Why, if it where true, do I have a mind while others who behave more or less the same do not?

Hence I find this whole line of argument to be specious philosphical claptrap.

OK, so having said all of that: What is the evolutionary explanation for consciousness?

First, I will say, that I am no expert on the evolution of consciousness, and the following are COMPLETELY my thoughts, and my thoughts alone on the subject, as I've never done any reading on the evolution of consciousness (I don't even think that Dawkins covered it in The Blind Watchmaker, which surprised me).

OK. Why did consciousness evolve? Because it was advantageous. Duh, you say. Here's what I mean. Your brain is a control center. It is connected to the outside world via a fantastic array of sensors. These sensors are exactly that, they send signals (which are, believe it or not, more or less digital in a certain sense) to the brain. Now, you can imagine a very simple creature, whose sensors are wired directly into various response mechanisms. Thus a certain stimuli will fire off a prewired automated response. There are plenty of creatures that do this. So each stimulus/response pair is a prepackaged set of neural circuitry.

Now it is not hard to imagine that the number of stimulus/response packages that are required will grow as the world our creature lives in becomes more complicated, i.e. more threatening. There will be evolutionary pressure to evolve more numerous and sophisticated sensors and behavioral responses. All of these new prepacked, prewired response mechanisms require more neural machinery, more circuitry. All of these response "programs" can run separately on their own independant "hardware" (a deceptive analogy, as extro has already pointed out, but you get my point; the different neural response circuits are all seperate from each other). You can see that the amount of neural circuitry required will go up as the number of stimulus/response pairs the animal must have to survive (or at least have some non-nill chance of survival).

Now, given the above scenario, you can see that there will definitely come a point when there is selective advantage not in producing ever more pre-packaged stimulus/response circuits, each with their high costs of embryonic development and metabolic maintenance, but rather in divorcing sensory input from motor response, via an intermedite level of "circuitry". This level is the behavioral/decision-making level. This circuitry is shared across many sensory systems, and shared across many response/motor systems. While the circuitry of this level is necessarily more complex, you need less of it than you would for an equivalently behaved bundle-of-independent-stimulus/responses-circuitrs animal (i.e., a meat robot), because it is highly connected. The capabilities of the decision-making animal to deal with an ever more complicated (i.e. threatening) world grow exponentially with added neural hardware, where as the bundle-of-independent-responses animal's abilities can only grow linearly. Thus the decision-making animal has a direct selective advantage.

What is this behavioral/decision-making level like? Well, it would need to have the following quality: It would need to integrate all of the disparate types of sensory inputs so that a single set of behavioral hardware could deal with them, and choose appropriate responses. This is exactly what we experience: the "integrated sensorium" that is our world. It is a sophisticated internal reconstruction of our physical environment, based solely upon clickety-click neural signals from hundreds of thousands of various sensors, incorporating electromagnetic radiation imaging sensors (eyes), air-pressure wave sensors (ears), tactile pressure and temperature sensors (touch), accelerometers (balance), and chemicals receptors (taste and smell). All of these digital signals are reconstructed into a single integrated sensorium, because that is the format that the minimal amount of neural hardware is required to deal with our complicated world and it's near infinite set of stimuli (i.e. threats and opportunities).

Hence, I think "consciousness" is an emergent property of complicated neural machinery that has evolved to respond to the widest range of stimuli, with the widest array of behaviors, with the most efficient use of hardware. It has a direct selective advantage over the competition in this.

A final note: all of the above analysis is not in any way restricted to humans. Consciousness is independent of intelligence in my opinion. Animals had integrated sensoria hundreds of millions of years ago. They had emotions hundreds of millions of years ago as well. I defy ANY of you to prove that my dog does NOT have consciousness, and since he behaves as though he does, I'll give him the same benefit of the doubt that I gave the rest of you when I dismissed extro's philosophical musings as pointless.

Off to lunch.

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[This message has been edited by Borodog (edited 07-15-2002 01:13 PM).]

[Bicho the Inhaler]

[Borodog]

That's what I meant when I said that it is an "emergent" property. I think having an "entity" that "feels" and "knows" is the best way to build a control system that has to deal with a near-infinite variety of situations with a near-infinite variety of responses. I run this way because I am "afraid" of what is that way. I am less interested in why we have consciousness from an evolutionary view, as I said, I think it obviously has selective advantage over thousands, millions, billions of disconnected automated circuits. What interests me is how it happens, physically.

I have a gedanken experiment for you. Imagine if you will that it is 10 years down the road. Nanotechnology has progressed to the point where billions of microscopic machines (each smaller than a neuron) can be pumped into your head. They crawl over and through your brain, and settle down, one or several, on every cell in your brain. They map out, and transmit to an external computer, the location of each cell, and its synaptic connections to the surrounding cells. Not only that, they record all activity of each and every neuron, incoming and outgoing. In essence, it records all of the responses of each neuron to every type of stimulus that it can receive.

Now, you take this tremendous volume of information, and program another several billion nanomachines. They are connected via an identical network topology as the original brain, and each is programmed to respond in the same manner as the organic neurons to various stimuli. Finally, "input signals" are generated from a virtual reality simulation and connected via this psuedo-brain's "optic nerves", "auditory nerves", "olfactory nerves", "spinal cord" etc. Now, flip the swtich. Boot it up.

Will it be conscious? Will it be you?

I suspect that it will. I think "consciousness" is an emergent effect of that highly complex network of connections and individual control nodes. I could be wrong, and there could be a higher level of "encoding"; it may be the case that waves of electricity washing over and through the brain play some higher-level part in consciousness, but it's really the same thing. It's still an emergent property. You might have to immerse your network of neurobots in a medium of certain electrical conductivites, but at some point, the function of your machine is indistinguishable from the organic machine it replicates. This is another of the three routes to practical immortality that I see occuring in the next few decades.

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[This message has been edited by Borodog (edited 07-15-2002 02:48 PM).]

[Bicho the Inhaler]

Borodog- I read an interesting story by...Daniel Dennett (I think it was him) that addresses a very similar hypothetical situation. One problem I see is the sheer level of detail you would need in order to replicate a brain accurately. The brain isn't an abstract computer; it is physical. It changes with time; connections between neurons are made and broken. So far, this can conceivably be modeled using, say, nanomachines or what you will, that not only respond to stimuli in the same way as your neurons but can modify themselves. But there's more to the brain than just nervous I/O; the brain is affected by details of implementation. Insufficient oxygen can kill neurons en masse. Head injuries can destroy neurons and "inactivate" whole sections of the brain. There are also diseases that affect the brain. None of this is "digital," as you say. Maybe it is predictable in the sense of mechanical determinism (still very arguable), but I don't think we will ever have the ability to make such predictions even if the information required is technically "available". So in reply to that thought experiment,

[Borodog]

[Bicho the Inhaler]

Okay, I don't think we're on the same page here. In your previous post, you said that the duplicate brain we made would "be me." How do you mean? You went on to discuss consciousness as an emergent property of a complex network, but you didn't explain what you meant by that.

[Mikko]

A Finnish astronomist (can't remember his name) has a similar idea in his recent book.

In his example you replace a single neuron in your brain with an artificial one that behaves like the original one. You are still the same person, aren't you? What if you replace every neuron in you, one by one, to artificial ones? Since changing one neuron doesn't change who you are, neither should replacing another one and so on, until all the neurons are artificial.

[Bicho the Inhaler]

extro posted an interesting thread along the same lines a while back. It was called "some more pointless philosophical fluff to chew on." It's still in the Off Topic Forum.

[Borodog]

[Bicho the Inhaler]

Oops, I guess you're not the only one being unclear.

Originally posted by me:

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You went on to discuss consciousness as an emergent property of a complex network, but you didn't explain what you meant by that.

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The "that" was misplaced; I meant for it to refer to the "being me" in my first sentence. I do like your analogies though.

I think we're actually in agreement on a lot of this. Would the pseudo-brain be conscious? Sure. Would it share my memories? Why not? Would it have my personality? I think so. Indistinguishable to the outside world, but not indistinguishable to me in the following important sense:

[Borodog]

True, but ultimately irrelevant, I think.

Imagine that you are to be duplicated, down to the last atom. You enter a chamber with three chairs (reclining chairs, dentists' chairs, we'll say). You lay down in one of the chairs, and are givin an anesthetic that puts you to sleep.

Then you are duplicated.

When you awaken, you find yourself in the room with an exact duplicate of you. You are not in the same chair you started out in, but he's not in your original chair, either; it is empty.

Now. Who is "you" ? Why does it matter? How can it possibly matter?


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[extropalopakettle]

Long post. With rather long quotes, but I think it helps make clear what I'm addressing.

Thanks Borodog in advance for his patience.

[Borodog]

extro,

I just have to say, that this is one kick ass discussion!

OK, have to respond to your post now. I am SO not getting any work done today . . .



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[extropalopakettle]

Thanks, that makes up for the Roboboy crack.

[Borodog]

Extro,

My apologies. I'm not sure who I was arguing with, but it apparently wasn't you. I'm going to skip a lot of the first part of the post, because I think we're actually in agreement. Now that I understand better what you're trying to get at (not if other humans have consciousness, but why humans experience rather than just behave, and whether or not similarly complex information processing systems would "experience"; correct me if I'm wrong on these), I think we can have a more meaningful discussion.

First off:

[Borodog]

Sorry, the Roboboy crack was aimed at the reader in general, not you in particular. My apologies.


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[extropalopakettle]

Ah, the reader deserves it.

[extropalopakettle]

[Borodog]

OK! I get the point! You only had to say it about 40 times for it to sink in. Heh.

OK, so the question is (the fundamental question; you get to some really cool implications later), does consciousness affect behavior? And just to put it very, very explicitly for my little physicist brain - does consciousness affect physical interactions? Because that is what it comes down to. If all of the structures of consciousness are coherent with physical brain structures that perform specific functions solely by physical/chemical processes . . . then for consciousness to affect behavior, then it (whatever it is) has to affect some physical process. Consciousness, for all intents and purposes, must be able to affect pool balls bouncing off of each other, and springs, and pendulums, and electrical flow, because that my friend, when you get right down to it, is what the physical structures are doing.

For consciousness to affect behavior, it must affect material interactions. I'm just repeating this for myself as I think about the implications. Because they sure as heck are interesting.

I'm going to go check the other thread now. I have more thoughts on this. I have to organize them.


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[Borodog]

I'm reposting this here to tie these two threads together, as I think we'd both agree they've converged.

Originally posted by extro:

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First, the point has been made, I think by Chalmers and others, and I agree, that what constitutes "information processing" is purely a matter of interpretation by observers. A computer sorts a list of numbers - this is information processing. Ocean waves sort the pebbles on a beach - this is information processing too. It's all information processing. Sometimes somebody cares about the result, and sometimes, maybe, nobody does.
Second, from post 4 of this thread:

Originally posted by me:
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If neuron A does X, causing neuron B to do Y, why should that have a different effect than if neuron A does X and neuron B does Y independently? Is there any observeable example in nature where X and Y happening because X caused Y has a different effect than when X and Y happen, without one having caused the other?
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Observeable example, or plausible explanation ...

So when you say ...


quote:
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These two sets of neurons are processing completely different information sets; the original is processing highly connected and organized information about the state of the real world, with each processor (i.e. neuron) processing it's subset of information from it's networked neighbors in a causal fashion. The "playback brain" is doing nothing of the sort; the information it is processing is billions of independent magnetic tapes reading "Fire, fire, fire, don't fire, fire, don't fire, don't fire, fire . . ."
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... I don't understand the significance of "causal fashion".

But I can accept the possibility that there is something more to the universe that we don't yet understand (indeed, I expect it).

But the big question is (and I think I may have asked it in the Evolutionary Hot Seat thread), assuming consciousness emerges from information processing, does it affect that information processing, or is it merely a by-product? If information processing is equivalent to computation, then consciousness does not affect it. But if consciousness does not affect information processing, there would be no selective disadvantage to the subjective experiences of pain and pleasure being reversed, for instance. In which case I would have to find it remarkably fortuitous that things are as they are (even though I'd say this if they weren't, since what I say would not be affected, but would be the result of that information processing).

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[Fried Egg]

Hmmm...this is getting interesting.

This, to me, boils down to another way of asking the mechanistic/dualistic questions of consiousness. Are we (as in our consiousness) in a two way interaction with our brains or are we merely passively observing our brain's functions.

The latter seems more at home in the dualistic camp as there could be (as Extro said) no evolutionary reason for it's existance. Then you have to start asking spiritual questions.

I would say that consiousness must interact with the brain in a bidirectional fashion and then it's existance could be justified from an evolutionary point of view.

[Borodog]

It seems rather prejudiced to me to completely ignore the interactions of events, and only concern onself with states. What is the basis for that kind of assumption? X happening and causing Y really is fundamentally different from X happening, and then Y happening independently. X causing Y ties them together causally; there will be information exchanged between them; their states will be related, they're entangled. It is very easy to say, ok, I'll just watch X cause Y. Then I'll cause X, and I'll cause Y, and make sure they're in the same state as when they were causally connected. Guess what? I don't think it can be done. I think to measure what states X and Y were in you have to change those states, so that it is impossible to even know what the states of X & Y were, much less reconstruct X & Y.

Here's what I'm getting at. Whether or not consciousness can effect behavior or is just "along for the ride," it is certainly a process. It is ongoing. It happens in concert and is structurally identical to the information processing going on in the brain. The two processes you're talking about, the real-time brain and the playback brain, are not undergoing the same process. If I numbered and recorded the positions of all the pebbles on the beach, removed them, shook them up, and replaced them according to my tables, the beach might look identical afterward, but the process is completely differet. And since consciousness does seem to be completely structurally equivalent with the physical process, it seems straightforward that the one process (causally processing complex information about external stimuli in order to interact and survive) is completely different from the other (billions of neurons independently reading 1s and 0s off of a tape and saying, fire!, don't fire!).

I'm starting to have a sneaky, sneaky suspician that electromagnetic waves play a large role in consciousness. I bet that they are not simply a by-product of the electrical discharges of neurons across synapses. I would hazard a guess that they actually feedback, and affect the network itself. In fact, I might venture a guess that consciousness is mediated by the electromagnetic field. Hell, consciousness might be stored within the electromagnetic field. In which case, hell yes it could affect behavior. Electromagnetic waves are like waves on the ovean, they can be chaotic. Small changes in initial conditions or the conditions along the way may have significant effects down the line.

Imagine that you have the same experiment that you had before, the brain with all of the little recording devices on each neuron . It records for a day, a day of glorious consciousness; electromagnetic waves flow around the brain, affecting when certain neurons fires, resonances build up and ebb, the firings in turn affecting the field. It is causally connected.

Now the next day, you switch on playback mode. But this time, they have you reclining on a couch, all of your neurons are moved around slightly. You've made some new connects, lost others. You drank a lot of water last night, so the salinity (and hence the conductivity) of your cranial fluid is a little bit different. Your neurons begin to fire in their preordained pattern. Electromagnetic fields flow, but the cannot affect the neurons any more. Very soon the fields look nothing like they did the previous day. The feedback loop has been broken. Would there be "consciousness" ? I don't know.

I'm going to lunch. Let me know what you think about thses thoughts. They're just sort of coming out stream of consciousness style (no pun intended).



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[Mr Nigma]

I love reading these type of threads.
I can't really contribute to the discussion because almost always someone has already posted what I would like to say and they did so in a much more intelligent way than I ever could.

I feel smarter just by reading these threads and it kills the boring hours between 0800 and 1630. Thank you all.


Sorry for the interruption. You may continue at your pleasure.

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I'm a figment of my imagination.
Cognito, ergo sum.

[Zarriar]

Cool discussion!

Originally posted by Borodog:

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Hell, consciousness might be stored within the electromagnetic field. In which case, hell yes it could affect behavior.

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I don't really grasp this concept at all, could you please explain it in more detail?

[Borodog]

If you don't think that the electromagnetic field can affect behavior, go stick you tongue in a light socket.

I just meant that electricity and magnetism are real things that affect material things in physical ways. You can store up and release energy from the electromagnetic field and affect physical changes with it. Which would simply mean that the physical construct we're talking about is more than just a network of firing neurons and synapses; it involves the actual fields themselves. Upon reflection, this doesn't do extro or myself any good in the context of the current discussion, because it gets you not one iota closer to explaining why there is an experience at all. It just postulates that perhaps the physical information processing system is a little more complicated. It's a Dell instead of an abacus. That still doesn't explain why it feels.

I think that Chalmers' resorting to some new unobservable fundamental is warranted. He compares it to Maxwell, but Maxwell needed his new fundamentals to explain things physically observable effects. And while I think extro and I would agree that consciousness is internally observable, and therefore is a candidate for explanation, it is not at all clear that it has any effect. From what I've read, all of the little bits and pieces that make up consciousness corespond exactly with structures in the brain doing the equivalent piece of functional information processing. When you damage that piece of hardware, boom, that structure or capability is gone from the consciousness.

Will think more.

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[This message has been edited by Borodog (edited 07-18-2002 03:25 PM).]

[extropalopakettle]

OK, so again, I reiterate (and I really think we're getting somewhere with this):

[Borodog]

Ok, I think we're back at a point we can disagree on. ;-)

[Lucky Wizard]

Bump. I posted a question a good two weeks ago.

[Borodog]

Woops! Completely missed it in the discussions with extro.

Lucky Wizard: How do you feel about Alan Thorne's "Regional continuity" theory?

It's too soon to tell.

Personally I think a combination of the replacement and regional continuity theories is not absurd. It is concievably that the suite of traits the we would associate with "modern" humans evolved in Africa some 100-300 thousand years ago. These traits included characteristics that allowed them to spread rapidly (geologically and evolutionarily speaking) out across the world. But if this process where ongoing, i.e. there was always a constant genetic flux from population to population, then superior genes would have flowed in waves across the peoples of the world, while local genetic inertia would allow for some regional continuity of phenotype.

It looks like the Mungo Man dating may be seriously flawed; rather than 60,000 years old, he's probably only 45,000, placing him at the forefront of the invasion of modern humans into Australia to be sure, but definitely modern.

Time, the fossils, mitochondrial DNA, and the weight of the evidence will tell. I do find it odd that one of their claims seems to be that regional continuity should account for the rise of Australian aboriginals, when the mitochondrial DNA from Mungo Man does not match them (Australian aboriginals in fact share the same mitochondrial DNA common ancestor as the rest of us).


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[Amb]

In case any one cares I believe in creationism, but I do see that a certain amount of natural selection does occur. What I find befuddling is the number of polarised people on either side of this debate that each seem to take the facts that suit their point of view and ignore or refute (inadequately) those that dont. Creation scientists often point at "facts" that help prove a young earth but seemingly refuse to acknowledge incidences that say otherwise. Evolutionary scientists tend to the same extreme with regards to the vice versa.

I personally wonder if there is a middle road in the debate where all concerned can put aside their intuition and respective histories and experiences and look objectively at all the facts. My opinion of creationism has come from my own reading on the topic and I try to be categorically objective when I read facts. If a question or fact comes up that makes my point of view look invalid I accept it and am happy to announce that I do not have the answer.

My Question is if not already asked is ... How does evolution account for the in built human reaction to spiritualisation. Nearly every human culture worships in some way, from the ancients of the Peruvian (and impossible) pyramids to the far middle east, to the obscureness of New Zealand, they all follow a spiritual song. But why? Either there is a spiritual side to the reality in which we live or evolution built it in for some purpose. Perhaps its both... Any opinions welcome. I may not agree, but that is the spice of life.