Pyrite
Emperor
Life is about having so much fun till it makes you die.
At least if you're doing it right.
At least if you're doing it right.
The Meaning of Life? (Really)
- Thread starter Prince_Imrahil
- Start date
So how can I tell the difference between a thing that thinks and one that does not? Do all mammals think? Do any/all fish think? How about reptiles and insects? I think that your very "unscientific" restriction on what constitutes consciousness is a terrible limitation bordering on "vague."Birdjaguar said:Why must it involve complex internal processing?
Perfection said:'Cause it needs to think! Rocks ain't concious!
Where's the beef? Or you only offering up veggie burgers today?Yes, that explains why the world was such a mess before Newton.Perfection said:Because if science didn't exist gravity could go every which way!
Perfection
The Great Head.
Well, it is very vague because I have little knowledge on animal psychology. I do note there's a distinct difference between the way men and rocks react. Men react by predicting the world using an internal model rocks don't. To the extent that other animals do it, I'm not sure.Birdjaguar said:So how can I tell the difference between a thing that thinks and one that does not? Do all mammals think? Do any/all fish think? How about reptiles and insects? I think that your very "unscientific" restriction on what constitutes consciousness is a terrible limitation bordering on "vague."
Think about your cat. Now tell me he/she is not capable of complex thought, of predicting that behavior X will get Y response from you or your mom? Have you ever see a dog play fetch? They bring the ball back, drop it at your feet and wait looking at the ball then you. And when you pick the ball up they get all tense and ready to run. Not complex enough to be a proud owner of consciousness?Perfection said:
Of course if you reject dogs and cats as having consciousness, I will retreat to chimps and the other great apes.
Humans can react by predicting (I'm not sure all do though
), but are you saying that the ability to predict stuff is what it is to have consciousness? Does a two year old "predict" any more or better than a dog, cat or adult chimp? Do humans gain consciousness at some point in their growing up?I would contend that at the molecular and atomic levels, the consciousness of rocks and people looks pretty much the same, except that more varied stimulus-response activity is going on in humans because they are more complex forms. The difference is in degree and not kind of activity.
Don't run from this Perf. It will haunt you all the days of your life.
I'll check back tomorrow.
I'll check back tomorrow.
Perfection
The Great Head.
Well just because certain animals are capable of concious behavior (Which I won't deny), it's a major strech to say that rocks do to.Birdjaguar said:
Like I said, "Men react by predicting the world using an internal model rocks don't."
Maybe dogs chimps and bugs do, but that's beside the point. The point is rocks don't!
Shaihulud
Deity
My meaning of life changes according to my need, but it is always something that will make me happy in the pursuit thereof and it should never be satisfied or what would life be worth?
Dann
Green bug
The Silicoids do.Perfection said:
Shaihulud
Deity
Im sure the silicoids thought processes requires complex interactions, chemical or physical. The same cannot be said for ordinary rocks. intelligence requires complex processes.
That's why I support turning rocks into processors and using those processors to augment my thinking. Because I like to augment my thinking ability.
Perfection
The Great Head.
Yeah, but they're too repulsive to count!Dann said:The Silicoids do.
We strive to be tolerant of your uncreative jokes sometimes.
El_Machinae said:
[Homer Simpson]Increase my killing power, hmm . . .[/Homer Simpson]
I never said that either. I did say that all matter does have some level of consciousness (awareness of things external to it). You have taken a rather vague position that some undefined level of complexity is required for consciousness, which revolves around predicting. And you also made the point that stimulus response is not consciousness.Perfection said:
Since you aren't posting what you think consciousness is and how one might recognize it, I will go out on the limb and try to make clearer what I'm talking about.
From an earlier post in this thread:
Consciousness can be scaled on a continuum from most primitive to most evolved. Let's assume for this discussion that humans possess the most evolved level of consciousness and they are on one end of the imagined line. On the other I would put the most basic and fundamental of the stimulus/response interactions of the subatomic world.
Our level of consciousness is a product of evolution. If we back track through the evolution of life, we back track on the evolution of consciousness. It is not a straight line back, but consciousness evolved with all the dead ends and missteps seen in the fossil record. Kind of like this:
Humans
Apes
Higher order Birds, animals, fish etc
Lesser animals and insects
Plants
Microbial life
Notice succeeding levels of awareness do not eliminate previous levels, just build on them. The part of the continuum that tracks life is completely full with examples of consciousness at every point from the very first living thing all the way to humans. It is an unbroken chain from Mimi virus to humans. And the current mix of life on earth represents all stages of the evolution of consciousness
All along the evolutionary path the ability to respond to the environment gets better. The limitations on bacteria are less a problem in spiders and this ability to respond gets better in rats and antelope. Slowly, life's ability to respond to the environment adds a new element: the ability to control that environment. It starts in just small ways and reaches full potential in humans.
Ok, if you get this, let me know. I don't want to move on to rocks until I know you have a grasp of what I've said so far. Questions welcome from all.
Ayatollah So
the spoof'll set you free
Prince_Imrahil said:
Let me rephrase that last question before answering Yes.
In the end, doesn't something(s) have to be valuable as an end in itself in order for anything to be valuable as a means to an end? And therefore those things which are ends in themselves need no (further) purpose?
Answer: Yes, correct.
As for why survival matters: it's a necessary means to everything else.
Perfection
The Great Head.
@Birdjag, you're really twisting the definition of conciousness to something really bizzare. Let's go back to the initial part of the arguement, why there is a purpose to the universe, how does the "conciousness" of a rock give the universe purpose?
CaptainF
The Professional Poster
Right now I think that neither Atheism nor Theism fits me.
Atheism because it is a scientists ego machine.
Deism because of the hypocrisy.
The truth is somewhere in the middle, at least for me!
Atheism because it is a scientists ego machine.
Deism because of the hypocrisy.
The truth is somewhere in the middle, at least for me!
Perfection
The Great Head.
Ummm, please explain that.Dawgphood001 said:
Ummm, please explain that.Dawgphood001 said:
What exactly is that middle? (and no just saying "the truth" is not witty or funny, because I arleady thought of it first, ya scaliwag.)Dawgphood001 said:
Perfection, you're going to have a very hard time showing that people can have consciousness but that rocks cannot, unless you're willing to posit one or another kind of human soul. That was the only way Aristotle could solve the problem of rationality, which can be stated in several variations of the "slippery slope of consciousness" type to which Birdjaguar has already alluded.
Your basic problem is that any materialistic account of human consciousness would seem to permit, even require, both infinite reductions of consciousness and a principle of consciousness inherent in matter.
For example: A braindead person is a body from which consciousness has fled, in which no human thought processes inhere. The body still maintains biostasis of a kind, and reacts in certain ways to its environment, but not in a fashion categorically different from that in which a slime colony or a pitcher plant does. You would say, then, that he does not have consciousness. Now imagine a normal person who has a degenerative disorder which causes him to progress inexorably from normalcy to braindeath. At some point, you'll have to say, he transits instantly from consciousness to the lack of it, since there is no smooth hierarchy of consciousness. People have it, but slime colonies and anything resembling them do not. Maybe 57, 436, 232 is the minimum number of connected dendrites required for consciousness (substitute whatever kind of threshold you find plausible). But then you have to say that there's something special about a brain with 57, 436, 232 connected dendrites, which permits it to be conscious, but which doesn't apply to a brain with 57, 436, 231 connected dendrites.
Or, to take a different approach, imagine that humans perfect a technology of replacing brain components with superior artificial substitutes, in order to augment our thinking capacity. You replace your brain with silicon, bit by bit, maintaining all the while awareness of your self and of your surroundings. Eventually your brain is entirely made of silicon and gold, without you having noticed a change (other than your shiny new 2000 IQ). You're still you. But, on the other hand, you have now made an entirely artificial brain out of rocks, and it still seems to have consciousness. Or perhaps it doesn't, since rocks can't be conscious of anything, and when you replaced your 9 millionth nerve cell, you became an unconscious computer instead of a person. This seems as untenable as the conclusion of the previous conjecture.
They're silly examples to be sure, but they illustrate your problem: if people are conscious and rocks are not, then somewhere along the line you have to draw a line beyond which rationality is destroyed. And this is very difficult to do without invoking some kind of metaphysical reality, which of course is entirely out of the realm of scientific inquiry. Even beyond the difficulty of saying that some kinds of matter can be conscious of themselves and others cannot, you have the absurdity of having to delineate where and in what circumstances one becomes the other. Birdjaguar and I have different answers to this problem, and both of us differ from Aristotle: BJ says everything has simple consciousness in varying magnitudes; Aristotle says living things have spirits, arranged according to type in an ordered hierarchy; I say there's only human souls and the Holy Spirit. But we all have answers (though they produce difficulties of their own for each of us respectively). You, however, are in a tricky position on this question.
Your basic problem is that any materialistic account of human consciousness would seem to permit, even require, both infinite reductions of consciousness and a principle of consciousness inherent in matter.
For example: A braindead person is a body from which consciousness has fled, in which no human thought processes inhere. The body still maintains biostasis of a kind, and reacts in certain ways to its environment, but not in a fashion categorically different from that in which a slime colony or a pitcher plant does. You would say, then, that he does not have consciousness. Now imagine a normal person who has a degenerative disorder which causes him to progress inexorably from normalcy to braindeath. At some point, you'll have to say, he transits instantly from consciousness to the lack of it, since there is no smooth hierarchy of consciousness. People have it, but slime colonies and anything resembling them do not. Maybe 57, 436, 232 is the minimum number of connected dendrites required for consciousness (substitute whatever kind of threshold you find plausible). But then you have to say that there's something special about a brain with 57, 436, 232 connected dendrites, which permits it to be conscious, but which doesn't apply to a brain with 57, 436, 231 connected dendrites.
Or, to take a different approach, imagine that humans perfect a technology of replacing brain components with superior artificial substitutes, in order to augment our thinking capacity. You replace your brain with silicon, bit by bit, maintaining all the while awareness of your self and of your surroundings. Eventually your brain is entirely made of silicon and gold, without you having noticed a change (other than your shiny new 2000 IQ). You're still you. But, on the other hand, you have now made an entirely artificial brain out of rocks, and it still seems to have consciousness. Or perhaps it doesn't, since rocks can't be conscious of anything, and when you replaced your 9 millionth nerve cell, you became an unconscious computer instead of a person. This seems as untenable as the conclusion of the previous conjecture.
They're silly examples to be sure, but they illustrate your problem: if people are conscious and rocks are not, then somewhere along the line you have to draw a line beyond which rationality is destroyed. And this is very difficult to do without invoking some kind of metaphysical reality, which of course is entirely out of the realm of scientific inquiry. Even beyond the difficulty of saying that some kinds of matter can be conscious of themselves and others cannot, you have the absurdity of having to delineate where and in what circumstances one becomes the other. Birdjaguar and I have different answers to this problem, and both of us differ from Aristotle: BJ says everything has simple consciousness in varying magnitudes; Aristotle says living things have spirits, arranged according to type in an ordered hierarchy; I say there's only human souls and the Holy Spirit. But we all have answers (though they produce difficulties of their own for each of us respectively). You, however, are in a tricky position on this question.
