What is it about the brain that makes it the seat of consciousness? — RogueAI

If you mess with it, you mess with consciousness. If you were to separate the head from the body and do it in a way that kept giving oxygen to the head, it will eventually die, but still be conscious with the same feeling of paralyzation from the neck down.

So far we've only asked a few short lived heads:

In 1905, a French physician sought to find out. He attended an execution and stood close to the guillotine. He approached as soon as the severed head tumbled into the basket below and called out the man’s name.

He claimed the eyelids lifted and the man looked briefly at him before lowering his gaze. The physician called his name again and received a similar response. The man did not respond to a third prompt. The physician concluded based on his observations that a severed head could retain consciousness for 25 to 30 seconds.

If you mess with it, you mess with consciousness. If you were to separate the head from the body and do it in a way that kept giving oxygen to the head, it will eventually die, but still be conscious with the same feeling of paralyzation from the neck down.

So far we've only asked a few short lived heads: — Christoffer

Yes, I understand that, but what is is about brains that makes them conscious? There must be something about brains that makes them necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness. What makes brains so special?

Yes, I understand that, but what is is about brains that makes them conscious? There must be something about brains that makes them necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness. What makes brains so special? — RogueAI

Three things I think necessary for any information processing:

1 Nodes that perform some mathematical/logical function on inputs and produce an output.
2 Channelled transmission of outputs to the inputs of other nodes.
3 Amplification of signals.

Here is an example, see if you can recognize those three elements:



Then consider the neural networks in brains and the relative lack of neural networks in hearts.

However,there is also such a thing as top-down causation which mitigates against purely physicalist explanations of consciousness. — Wayfarer

FYI, in Terrence Deacon's book Incomplete Nature, he discusses Emergence and Downward Causation. He explains, "downward causation . . . is in this sense not causation in the sense of being induced to change . . . but is rather an alteration in causal probabilities". He also says, "supervenience is in many respects the defining property of emergence, but also the source of many of its conceptual problems".

One way to think of Supervenience is to note that Emergence follows a series of changes as an unforeseen development, due to statistical Uncertainty (probability), as in Quantum theory. That may be why erroneously assumes that you are denying physical Reality, when you are merely asserting the existence of non-physical Ideality --- as supervenient upon reality --- and noting that --- perhaps due to human intention*1 --- causation can flow both ways. :smile:


*1. Entention : An intention is a mental state in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action.
"The natural sciences must exclude ententional explanations, whereas the so-called special sciences*2 cannot" ___ Deacon, Incomplete Nature
Note --- Philosophy is, in this sense, a Special Science.

*2. Special sciences :
Special sciences are those sciences other than fundamental physics. In this view, chemistry, biology, and neuroscience—indeed, all sciences except fundamental physics—are special sciences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_sciences

Yes, I understand that, but what is is about brains that makes them conscious? There must be something about brains that makes them necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness. What makes brains so special? — RogueAI

Their composition of neurons and regions of complex systems that together make up our consciousness. That's why they are special, but they're not more special than other animal brains, only special to us and maybe because it's the highest advancement of consciousness that we've observed in nature.

But that's not really the question you ask, the "why" relates more to how did we got here. The reason the brain became what it became and evolved how it evolved is something I briefly wrote about earlier in this thread. A plausible line of causality for why it evolved in this direction:

the evolutionary necessity can simply be boiled down and explained through the human species starting with the evolutionary trait of adaptability, the need for it. Humans are highly adaptable in nature when speaking of only our basic body functions. Adaptability is an extremely powerful evolutionary trait, especially for animals that move over large distances and climates. It is not far fetched that the whole reason we developed our level of consciousness is due to this adaptability, a function that makes us able to plan and change behaviors according to the environment. This increase in complexity developed through evolution would then, just like other emergent systems of high complexities, produce new functions that weren't part of the intended simple function. That in order to be adaptable, we developed systems to recognize, memorize and formulate visualized scenarios in order to be able to plan our next moves. These systems together would be able to produce a new level of complexity which may be the reason why subjectivity occurs. — Christoffer

And the reason why it is so extremely complex as a system is probably because of iterative changes that have occurred over the entire evolutionary timeline. We can ask this about any complex natural phenomena among animals. How are birds able to sense the magnetic lines of the earth to guide them during seasons? Because of that need pushing evolution in that direction.

The most remarkable thing I think is how plants mimic insects to lure them towards them and spread pollination. These plants do not have eyes to spot how these insects look, but those who survived the best had flowers closer to the insect's form and color. Without being able to see, it still, over the course of thousands, if not millions of iterations of mutations arrived at almost an identical shape and color as the insects that exist in symbios with their existence.

Plate class macroscopic properties supervene on chemical structure level properties. — fdrake

Right, that's how I understand supervenience. "The plate" is the object with A-level properties, and "Chemical structure", including relative position, is the set of objects with B-level properties.

I guess strictly speaking all the events at moment 12:00 could supervene on the set of events at 11:59. If you think of classes of events and objects as properties of the stratum of events and objects which exist at a moment, you would get collections at 12:00 only changing if collections at 11:59 had changed. So assuming the collections are properties, I think that follows.

But there is something a bit iffy in taking those properties to be extensional? As in, the macroscopic properties of the plate seem specified by understanding a (defining?) intension toward it as a macroscopic object; manipulability, colour, texture... On the level of configurations of atoms and structure. Whereas the "structure" of a moment is just that it is an index. — fdrake

... Yeah, nevermind. Moments do not supervene upon moments. I was sort of thinking that one might work out causation this way, but then the more I thought about it the less sense I could make of it. Causes are events which preceed and necessitate effects -- themselves also events. Perhaps some two-level structure within events could have supervenience, like wars supervening upon soldiers, but there aren't two levels between moments -- they're at the same logical plane, and the before-after structure is an ordering of events to an index rather than a two-level structure.

... which is still too general to make a decision either way about physicalism. :D

Thanks for the responses.

We do not yet know if it is impossible to predict or merely that the prediction is too complex for us to compute it. If it were, would that then be an explanation? — Christoffer

No, why would it? The only thing at stake would be whether the term 'emergence' would be used, which is not super rigorous.

It only becomes a description if we can conclude it fundamentally impossible to be predicted. — Christoffer

It is only ever a description. Name one physical phenomenon where emergence functions as an explanation.

Our consciousness might be the most complex emergent property in nature, when only looking at it in comparison to others, but we're also just a last point in a gradient of intelligence among animals. — Christoffer

I think this is what maters. We are what McKenna called 'the moving wave-front of eternity'.
We're at the front of the line, and as such, we are somewhat obligated (i don't actually think this - im being poetic) to be astute about how we bring the universe forward in time. In that sense, the nature of our consciousness is a key to understanding what's going on there. If we are the top of that hierarchy, and that our consciousness has developed most recently compared to other, less complex kinds - it is special and we're well-supported in treating our consciousness as special.

Here is a definition of reductionism: "a science can be reduced to another field of study if that other field of study gives a coherent account of the initial science."

What do you think of this definition?

On this understanding, chemistry and even consciousness is reducible to physics. Although, physics would not be reducible to chemistry.

In terms of a complete explanation of something, I think what is problematic is not that chemistry or consciousness are irreducible, but that physics is itself incomplete. I think this may not be a problem with reductionism on its own terms (as I have defined it), rather it is a problem with the field of study that some other field is reduced to.

So far we've only asked a few short lived heads: — Christoffer

I've always been skeptical of that. People pass out from far lesser interruptions to cerebral blood flow than the total catastrophe of beheading. More likely it was some involuntary muscle contractions, fancifully interpreted.

:ok:

The conscious thing is that which we observe when it comes to consciousness. The phenomena we call consciousness is exactly identical, in fact one-and-the-same, to the conscious thing. In our case, it’s our bodies. In the case of bat consciousness, it’s the body of the bat. Consciousness is the organism, as you yourself imply. But we needn’t go any further than that. We needn’t reduce or expand consciousness in any other direction, to some other organ or substance, simply because no other organ or substance can be shown to be conscious.

Consciousness doesn’t emerge as a property any more than unconsciousness does, or happiness, or sadness, or anger. I do not think that it’s possible to show someone acquires more properties, or different properties, should she shift her emotions from one to the other, or when he falls asleep. The properties required for any state of emotion, consciousness, feeling, or mind are already present. No such thing emerges. Rather, the body changes in ways that are observable.

Moreover, we can abandon the noun “consciousness” entirely from philosophy of mind and lose nothing. For me, “consciousness” appears as the last refuge for those who wish to rescue the doctrine of the soul.

, ,

Trouble is of course that emergence is used in different ways. Roughly, it sits amongst other terms such as supervenience, reduction, dualism and causation generally.

Here's one way to use the terms, that attempts to set out some of the differences. Folk do use the terms in other ways. This is offered as a starting point.

The paradigm of causation are things of the same type - billiard balls crashing on to each other and so forth. In casual explanations, A ⇒ B, where A and B are described in much the same terms.

Causal descriptions become problematic when they are of different types; so explaining a twister in terms of the movement of individual particles, or minds in terms of electro-chemical processes; where we have two very different descriptions of what is perhaps the very same thing.

Supervenience is used sometimes as a general term for when A and B are described in quite different terms, and yet A and B are supposed to be the same thing.

(Just to be clear, the "⇒" is not a logical implication nor necessarily a cause - read it as "leads to" or something equally benign. It might be dealt withe later)

Reductionist explanations take one of the descriptions to be "nothing but" the other - the twister is nothing but the movement of particles, mind is nothing but an electro-chemical process. In reductionist explanations, A and B are described in quite different terms however A ⇒ B where there is nothing in B that is not also found in A.

Emergence differs in that there are things described in B that are not found in A, but "emerge" somehow, and in a way that is not reducible. A and B are described in quite different terms, however A ⇒ B, yet there are things about B that are not found in A. The snowflake's symmetry emerges from sublimating water molecules, consciousness emerges form a neural network...

Now I do not think this account is adequate to differentiate reduction and emergence. I would like someone to do better.

An alternative opts for two distinct descriptions, A and B, that use different terms to talk about the same thing. This is sometimes called dualism, sometimes supervenience. This is not unproblematic, but may be preferrable to the confusion of reduction and emergence.

Perhaps we could ask, how is emergence not simply reduction, backwards?

If consciousness emerges from brains, then consciousness would emerge from something functionally equivalent to a brain, correct?

The snowflake's symmetry emerges from sublimating water molecules, consciousness emerges form a neural network... — Banno

Can consciousness emerge from a computer running a simulation of a working brain?

The problem is not in finding examples of phenomena that might exhibit emergence. There are plenty of those. It's in framing what emergence is in a way that meshes with the overall ontology (which would generally be physicalism since the overwhelming amount of work on emergence is in that context).

The blocks example is about our intuition — a metaphor. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It seemed to me to be reinforcing a simplistic intuitive view, since blocks aren't something we typically think of as interacting with each other in any very interesting way.

However, substitute dominos for blocks, and see the video I posted earlier, and you can observe the property emerging from the dominos being structurally arranged in a certain way.

I'm a ways back on your dominoes video and am wondering if it could be misleading on how computation is done. I agree dominoes can do it like computers. Possibly based on the Turing machine principal (but I have forgotten all the details of that). But I don't think human brains are doing the same thing. Brains actually use consciousness to do math that isn't present in computers. My sense is that brains really do contain and manipulate 'non-physicals' but computers do it mechanically and have no awareness. Two very different processes.

Now I remember...Turing machine is a punch tape that goes back and forth reading and writing but the principal is that one type of mechanical computer can mimic another type.

And humans don't have a fixed method of doing the math and first tries are trial and error.

I'm just really curious if anyone else thinks there is some discrepancy. Or is it just that brains are so advanced the consciousness developed at high levels of complexity.

For anyone that thinks computers are (or someday will be) conscious, what do you say to Bernardo Kastrup's argument here:

"You see, everything a computer does can, in principle, be done with pipes, pressure valves and water. The pipes play the role of electrical conduits, or traces; the pressure valves play the role of switches, or transistors; and the water plays the role of electricity. Ohm’s Law—the fundamental rule for determining the behavior of electric circuits—maps one-on-one to water pressure and flow relations. Indeed, the reason why we build computers with silicon and electricity, instead of PVC pipes and water, is that the former are much, much smaller and cheaper to make. Present-day computer chips have tens of billions of transistors, and an even greater number of individual traces. Can you imagine the size and cost of a water-based computer comprising tens of billions of pipes and pressure valves? Can you imagine the amount of energy required to pump water through it? You wouldn't be able to afford it or carry it in your pocket. That’s the sole reason why we compute with electricity, instead of water (it also helps that silicon is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, found in the form of sand). There is nothing fundamentally different between a pipe-valve-water computer and an electronic one, from the perspective of computation. Electricity is not a magical or unique substrate for computation, but merely a convenient one. A wooden tool called an 'abacus' also computes.

With this in mind, ask yourself: do we have good reasons to believe that a system made of pipes, valves and water correlates with private conscious inner life the way your brain does? Is there something it is like to be the pipes, valves and water put together? If you answer ‘yes’ to this question, then logic forces you to start wondering if your house’s sanitation system—with its pipes, valves and water—is conscious, and whether it is murder to turn off the mains valve when you go on vacation. For the only difference between your house’s sanitation system and my imaginary water-based computer is one of number—namely, how many pipes, how many valves, how many liters of water—not of kind or essence. As a matter of fact, the typical home sanitation system implements the functionality of about 5 to 10 transistors.

You can, of course, choose to believe that the numbers actually matter. In other words, you may entertain the hypothesis that although a simple, small home sanitation system is unconscious, if you keep on adding pipes, valves and water to it, at some point the system will suddenly make the jump to being conscious. But this is magical thinking. You'd have to ask yourself the question: how, precisely, does the mere addition of more of the same pipes, valves and water, lead to the magical jump to conscious inner life? Unless you have an explicit and coherent answer to this question, you are merely engaging in hand waving, self-deception, and hiding behind vague complexity."
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2023/01/ai-wont-be-conscious-and-here-is-why.html

Maybe we are thinking about the same thing.

Ok, so I need to read Kastrup. I did not know about the analogy with pipes/water but I already felt the way the intended intuition about pipes/water as computational feels - but about the brain/neural networks. Viz....:

But this is magical thinking. You'd have to ask yourself the question: how, precisely, does the mere addition of more of the same pipes, valves and water, lead to the magical jump to conscious inner life? Unless you have an explicit and coherent answer to this question, you are merely engaging in hand waving, self-deception, and hiding behind vague complexity." — RogueAI

Bravo Kastrup. Has also jumped my hitlist, along with Ryle.

I think so.

You might like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAB21FAXCDE&ab_channel=TheoriesofEverythingwithCurtJaimungal

For anyone that thinks computers are (or someday will be) conscious, what do you say to Bernardo Kastrup's argument here: — RogueAI

I was wondering if this was going to come up. I'm curious too.

I can give a simple mental example of something brains can do in a different way than computers do.

Imagine a sphere in front of you (tennis ball size) at arms length. Now bisect it vertically and examine the two halves.

Can you do that? Easy right. The way your brain does it is nothing like a computer operates.

I, personally, can do this -- but not everyone can, though they understand the words.

Good point. I've noticed that. We shouldn't assume everyone has the same abilities. Like some people don't know left or right or compass directions ever.

It'd be interesting if there was some causal correlate to this, and other, abilities or tendencies, wouldn't it?

That might constitute a argument for physicalism -- but to establish supervenience it'd have to be universal (or, for science, pretty universal-ish looking), and we're just too ignorant at this point to be able to make that inference with respect to human being.

……but not everyone can….. — Moliere

I don’t get it.

Why can’t everyone do it? What’s the catch?

No catch -- just self report. Some people report not being able to imagine things. Aldous Huxley mentions it in his The Doors of Perception -- that mescaline enabled him to understand what people were saying when they said that they imagined things.