Consciousness: Is It Possible?

[Kyriakos]

And the observation that other people can think can be objective, because it can in principle be divided into specific observations that map to specific cognitive abilities.

(mostly wanted to react to this, later saw your edit ).

^ It can, but (since El Machinae already mentioned Turing) so could someone try to thus map what in reality was not a sentient reply. While i agree that it seems far more likely that (potentially all) other people also have a 'similar' consciousness in regards to many of its core properties, i still am of the view that ultimately the differences between my own consciousness, or yours, and a third person's, are big enough to render actual communication* not really existent.

*By "actual communication" i mean an ideal communication where you would pick up the same mental connections to something that i do, or at least potentially pick the same as well. Ie you would have essentially the same mental connections in place, from the conscious level to the abyss of unconsciousness. And i don't at all think this is true.

 

[Gatsby]

Where those thoughts come from is the unknown. That one wishes away this unknown is up to them, but one is still free to act upon any new thought that arises. Can any one explain to me what happens if the unknown did not generate thoughts?

It seems plain enough that humans would just keep rehashing the thoughts they already had. That does not work for advancing much though. When it comes to ingrained habits, it would be well nigh impossible. Even if humans could imagine their own ideas into the future, and then set about with science to enable that, there may be some breakthrough now and again, but even the great minds in their respective fields admit, that sometimes those breakthroughs happened beyond explanation.

It seems to me that things happened when humans did go after the unexplainable thoughts, instead of dismissing them and sticking with tradition.

It’s actually not that hard to see where thoughts come from, even unwanted thoughts. One might seem to be free to act upon any new thought but a combination of habits, available relevant information, incentives and temperament will decide whether any given thought is acted on.

The breakthroughs which sometimes occur to great minds are not beyond explanation, they are the results of extensive conscious and sub-conscious pondering of an issue. Not all intellectual breakthroughs have to follow a strictly linear and sequential thinking process.

 

[timtofly]

How much evidence do you need to see before accepting that consciousness is the result of neurochemical and electrical activity in the brain?

So far we have no reason to doubt that as we learn more this basic understanding will be an insufficient foundation for a more detailed understanding.

I have never said otherwise, unless you mean that thoughts pop up randomly similar to how genes mutate. You may be correct if they could map the neurons like they do the DNA sequence, and can show what a thought looks like and can tell what thoughts correspond to which "structures". In Gatsby's reply, perhaps the sub-conscious may be a key. The way it acts independent from our own ability to rationalize things on a conscious level may generate "new" thoughts. Admitting that though is slightly different than the misleading answer, we do not know where thoughts come from.

"spiritual" is another loaded word. The unknown is not spiritual, it's unknown. But the mind is not even wholly unknown, we know some stuff about how it works. So not only can you not call in spiritual just because it's unknown, you cannot call it spiritual because from what we know about it it isn't.

But I am not a Christian. So to me the Bible is no different than the Greek myths. It does make some claims about the nature, but they are arbitrary. We can explain rainbows as God's covenant with man, or we can explain rainbows as the only way optics work with light and water. But the former A) doesn't explain much about rainbows, and B) explains too much. Specifically, it explains too much because looking at a rainbow you cannot deduce the nature or existence of the covenant from it. (So you asked what evidence I'd need, and this is an example -- I'd need to be able deduce the covenant from rainbows.) Furthermore, there is a contradiction between science and the account of the Bible, because the Bible posits that there were no rainbows before the covenant. So it makes more sense to explain nature by the scientific method and disregard the Bible completely.


As to the Bible, I can understand that a Christian would consider it a source of knowledge. However, the bible occasionally conflicts with the results of science. There are two ways to resolve that. One is to say that the Bible takes precedence, which results in a variant of Last-Thursday-ism. The other is to say that the Bible is not wholly literal. In that case it becomes a question when reading a particular Biblical passage, how do you know if it's literal? Even if it's not contradicted by modern science, it might be in the future. So you're left to assume that the Bible may be wholly metaphor. But even that leaves claims about nature.

So you have pre-judged a "spiritual" experience and have written them all off? I contend that they are different than a self-induced one. But even self-induced one's may be difficult to tell between an actual experience or not. If we have relegated things to the sub-conscience, then we have not totally ruled out that it is misleading us. It just means one more step in the process of convincing me that there is not something out there that is unknown.

I am not quite saying here that the Bible is a source of knowledge. It is more a record of the knowledge people had at the time. Now, the contention lies in the fact that we have assumed science has replaced that knowledge. I don't think that it has been replaced. It seems more of an excuse not to accept it. That is not even wrong to do so. I think we have accepted that the mind can deceive us. That would include even objective claims, as seeing how scientist are willing to correct their own observations in the future as new ideas are formulated.

I was not trying to imply that "spiritual" meant all unknowns. Just the unknown of where thoughts come from. We have defined part of this into the terms social, community, and religion. But when people of like minds come together such bonds can be formed.

*By "actual communication" i mean an ideal communication where you would pick up the same mental connections to something that i do, or at least potentially pick the same as well. Ie you would have essentially the same mental connections in place, from the conscious level to the abyss of unconsciousness. And i don't at all think this is true.

Would this not manifest itself in groups coming together in social or even religious settings? It is not manifested in reading each other minds, but agreeing via other forms of communication. Telepathy is just the bypassing of other forms of communication. It would eliminate perhaps the ability to lie, but then again, we still admit the mind lies to us, so until we get past the hurdle that the mind can deceive us, I do not see telepathy an improvement.

It’s actually not that hard to see where thoughts come from, even unwanted thoughts. One might seem to be free to act upon any new thought but a combination of habits, available relevant information, incentives and temperament will decide whether any given thought is acted on.

The breakthroughs which sometimes occur to great minds are not beyond explanation, they are the results of extensive conscious and sub-conscious pondering of an issue. Not all intellectual breakthroughs have to follow a strictly linear and sequential thinking process.

Does this mean we do know where thoughts come from?

 

[Kyriakos]

Would this not manifest itself in groups coming together in social or even religious settings? It is not manifested in reading each other minds, but agreeing via other forms of communication. Telepathy is just the bypassing of other forms of communication. It would eliminate perhaps the ability to lie, but then again, we still admit the mind lies to us, so until we get past the hurdle that the mind can deceive us, I do not see telepathy an improvement.

It would not, cause when you have a group (and moreso a large group) you cannot have any deep communication anyway due to the group being identifiable by definition from its mass expressions, which are inevitably of the general kind. If one was in those massive nazi open-air rallies, he could not do much more if he was in the crowd than just wave, or shout something. Others around him would appear to mostly do the same. But this does not mean they are one, it merely meant that in such a setting you cannot present any particularly self-expressive quality if you are in the crowd.

As for telepathy, i was not alluding to that, and have no view of it cause i have not researched this issue almost at all. But it still would not have to touch on the notion of limited communication.

 

[peter grimes]

You may be correct if they could map the neurons like they do the DNA sequence, and can show what a thought looks like and can tell what thoughts correspond to which "structures". In Gatsby's reply, perhaps the sub-conscious may be a key. The way it acts independent from our own ability to rationalize things on a conscious level may generate "new" thoughts. Admitting that though is slightly different than the misleading answer, we do not know where thoughts come from.

Yeah, actually they can map certain thought patterns to specific neurons. It's new, but the body of evidence is growing every day. A couple of members of this very forum are involved in research along these lines, actually.

For a more in-depth review of our current understanding of free will - which many people mistakenly equate with consciousness - check out this multipart blog series. It's indexed in reverse chronological order, so read from the bottom of the page up:
http://blog.case.edu/singham/free_will/index

here's a teaser:

Grey Walter performed his experiment with patients in whose motor cortex he had implanted electrodes. He wanted to test the hypothesis that certain bursts of recorded activity were the initiators of intentional actions. So he arranged for each patient to look at slides from a carousel projector. The patient could advance the carousel at will, by pressing the button on the controller. (Note the similarity to Libet's experiment: This was a "free" decision, timed only by an endogenous rise in boredom, or curiosity about the next slide, or distraction, or whatever.) Unbeknownst to the patient, however, the controller button was a dummy, not attached to the slide projector at all! What actually advanced the slides was the amplified signal from the electrode implanted in the patient's motor cortex. (My italics bold)

As far as the patient was concerned, and according to the model (D) that has free will, the temporal sequence the patients expect should be conscious thought → button push → slide advance. But the direct measurement of motor cortex brain activity introduces a new time step that is unknown to the patient but can be measured by the researchers. As a result, if free will exists, the patient should first become aware of making a decision, then send a command to the motor cortex, which produces both the amplified signal (which causes the slide to advance) and sends a signal to the finger to push the button. If the slide advanced after the patient was conscious of making a decision to push the button but before the button was actually pushed, that would definitely puzzle the patients because they were under the impression that it was their pushing of the button that advanced the slide. But all it would really imply to the researchers is that the speed with which the motor neuron activity sends an electrical signal to the slide projector is greater than the speed with which the motor neuron sends the push signal to the finger.

So what happened? Dennett continues the story:
One might suppose that the patients would notice nothing out of the ordinary, but in fact they were startled by the effect, because it seemed to them as if the slide projector was anticipating their decisions. They reported that just as they were "about to" push the button, but before they had actually decided to do so, the projector would advance the slide - and they would find themselves pressing the button with the worry that it was going to advance the slide twice! (My italics bold)
...
This experiment could be interpreted as an early indication that there was a spike in brain activity about half a second before the person was conscious of making a decision to carry out an action.

 

[timtofly]

You would think they would have figured out a better way to conduct the test, to hide their deception. So the attempt was to separate a conscious thought from a sub-conscious thought? I still do not see how that changes free will. Would you not have to prevent one from actually thinking at all? It would seem that when they actually made the decision was when the spike occurred. The signal from the brain caused the slide to advanced before the finger could. Why would a person have to be aware of making a decision in this experiment? It seemed that was pre-determined by the test giver telling them to push the button when they decided to.

The decision was made and the signal was sent to the motor cortex. They were tricked into thinking they made the decision according to hitting the button, not at the actual point of making the decision. The brain still did what they decided to do. Now if the test had been thought out, the results out of sight of the subject, showing something different than what the subject was actually conscious of doing, may show how limited free will is.

I would still contend that free will operates on the conscious level. If it did not, it could hardly be called free will, but subjected to the whims of the subconscious. People who are unable to control anything via the consciousness definitely do not have free will, and lucky for us, they do not make up the majority of the population.

 

[Kyriakos]

I agree with Timtofly in regards to 'free will' operating on the conscious level. All of our willed thought process operates there, despite (obviously) being supported and made possible by unconscious mechanisms deeper below.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I recently read an article on brain science and while so far research has been amateurish, things seem to change fast and by now we are already moving astoundingly close to being able to record everything the brain does, the entirety of neurological activity, in real-time.
Saying, what today is "only" a very good assumption - that the mind is entirely reflected in physical activity - will probably be able to be proven (or disproven?) fairly soon. To the extend one can prove such a thing anyway.
And once we are able to entirely map neurological activity we will be able to fully explore whatever matter can tell us about consciousness.
What I personally am wondering is weather this will reveal anything knew about physics. I.e. weather a sort of physical anomaly is part of the process or weather it is just plain old physics all over again.
If the former - it may indicate that there is something "supernatural" about consciousness after all.
If the latter - consciousness will remain a mystery which is simply beyond nature as we are able to understand it from a materialistic POV. Let me stress that I say "beyond", but not "in conflict". I.e. - I don't think that the mere fact that the mind is in its entirety physically represented explains that there is a mind. It merely establishes that the mind does not contradict the laws of physics.

Stay tuned folks.

 

[Kyriakos]

^That is a lot of bad 'weather', though

 

[El_Machinae]

In some ways, we're close to complete mapping. In other ways, we are not. The combination of optogenetics and microscopy imply we could map out the neuron in worms in the next little while. Mice and higher appear to be right out. The advantage of worms is that we can see each neuron. With mice, you can only see the first few surface areas. To map every single neuron, we'd need some type of electronic probe that was vastly, vastly thinner than neurons themselves. It's just doesn't seem possible yet. That said, of course I could be wrong an the entire field could change with the snap of a finger.

There are current efforts to map a few hundred neurons at a time in dead brain tissue. This is onerous work. It's considered to be extremely important, but we don't know yet what the insights will be. Keep in mind that Neuroscience doesn't have its 'Darwin' yet, no true grand, unifying theory.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I am not thinking of optogenetics, but a wholly new approach which is also theorized by Ed Boyden (who also came up with optogenetics). The next step so to speak.
The idea involves some sort of micro-diamond-particles which get attached to single neurons. You would then have to sort of flood the entire brain with them and when a neuron fires the diamond particles emits a beam of light. Then you would insert a string of photodiodes into the middle of the brain and viola - real-time 3d brain mapping.

^That is a lot of bad 'weather', though

Cut me some slack

 

[Gatsby]

Does this mean we do know where thoughts come from?

Yes it does. Although we obviously can't track the development of every thought in every person's mind, we can make solid generalisations about where and how they arise. It's a bit like how we can devise accurate explanations for and predictions about rainfall without having to account for exactly where every drop of rain comes from.

 

[Kyriakos]

^For the above to have been a decent analogy you would have to argue that ultimately rain on earth comes crucially from outside our galaxy.

 

[timtofly]

I predict that if they do figure out how to map thoughts and realize they still "pop" into existence, or not, it will not change anything. People will still accept what they are free to choose.

 

[Gori the Grey]

From the story peter grimes quotes:

So what happened? Dennett continues the story:
One might suppose that the patients would notice nothing out of the ordinary, but in fact they were startled by the effect, because it seemed to them as if the slide projector was anticipating their decisions. They reported that just as they were "about to" push the button, but before they had actually decided to do so, the projector would advance the slide - and they would find themselves pressing the button with the worry that it was going to advance the slide twice! (My italics bold)
...
This experiment could be interpreted as an early indication that there was a spike in brain activity about half a second before the person was conscious of making a decision to carry out an action.

I join timtofly in thinking that Dennet's analysis of his own experiment is not wholly accurate, certainly that this tells us absolutely nothing about free will. If some portion of the mind has elected to do something before another portion internally refers to that as a "decision," that just maps the speed at which the brain carries out different functions. The fact that these subjects report being "about to" push the button shows that yet another level of their brain has recorded this decision as a decision, a being-about-to. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the mind was best served by routinely inserting a lag time between 1) deciding and 2) initiating the motor actions to carry out that decision. It would allows for split-second re-thinkings of decisions.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's not really an exercise in free will. It's reasonably good evidence that 'we' make a decision before we're aware that we have. The mainstream interpretation is that we post-hoc justify a lot of our behaviour.

 

[Kyriakos]

It's not really an exercise in free will. It's reasonably good evidence that 'we' make a decision before we're aware that we have. The mainstream interpretation is that we post-hoc justify a lot of our behaviour.

That may be true (in fact i am of the view it is, but it has to be elaborated a bit*) but it in no way means that we therefore have no "free will".

*If you view it even as a somewhat direct result of a previous event or state, you can easily build a model which presents any crucial urge to decide something or think something as one which was brought by previously existing parameters. This only means that the "free will" is not something existing by itself, ie a ball that moves itself out of a circular border made of a thin rope, to give an example with some images. The ball does not move by itself. However, in the case of our will, it can be said that the hand which moves that ball (and is not part of the same system, obviously, in mechanical physics terms) is a property of the ball that was moved, despite being outside of the circular border. So free will, in my view, is not the specific result of some urge or thought, but the very ability of that "hand", ie the very ability to cause a movement. You are not a ball in some circle, never able to move out of it no matter what, and if moven then you never caused your movement either