excreationist

No, there is also interaction with the environment! (responding) This way the system can refine its internal model of the world - by testing its beliefs about the world. Note that conscious systems involve *everything* I listed in the aware system definition.

You can associate the word "orange" with all of your memories relating to the colour orange - e.g. orange carrots, orange oranges, plain orange, etc. Then by internally saying the word you can trigger those memories. I don't think it is very mysterious.

Well as I said earlier, "we" coordinate our behaviour - and decide if something is good or bad. The pain signal just means "that's bad".
Do you seriously think having an automatic reaction to pain in our toes and no pain is the same as having pain and us deciding what to do?
e.g. say we stepped on some glass while walking with bare feet. Normally we'd get a pain signal which means "there's a huge problem in my feet!!! Do something!!!" So we'd stop and have a look at that foot and see that a piece of glass is stuck in it and that it is bleeding. We'd pull the glass out, limp to a tap and wash it off and wait for the blood to clot. (Assuming we weren't in a hurry to get somewhere)

Now let's say that our feet automatically handled it instead. So we would be walking along then suddenly our view would shake around and we'd feel our foot shake around. We mightn't notice it for a long time. Then we'd look down at our foot and notice it shaking around. Maybe a girl is passing by and we want the foot to stop... then I guess it would stop moving. But it actually has a good reason to shake but it can't tell us directly that there is a problem. Eventually we might get fed up with the foot shaking all the time and have a look at it. we'd see that we are leaving a trail of blood and looking underneath our foot we see a piece of glass that has burrowed its way into our foot.
Another example might be the pain from heat. Imagine a kid that touches a hot object and sees their arm being thrown by the heat (and feels no pain - pain means "AVOID DOING THAT!!!"). They might think it's fun - touching the hot object and their arm jumping away. They might see what happens if they hold that arm onto the hot object with their other arm. It would strongly try to jump away, like an animal, but they might be able to hold it. Their arm would just burn and burn as it tries to escape. They'd probably think that is pretty cool.
And kids might like jumping off of high places. They might twist their ankles and find it hard to walk but they'd still run around anyway. Then a kid might break their leg or arm and see it spasm around a bit but just ignore it. They might go to the doctor about the spasming and he says "your arm is broken" - the kid would just think that their arm isn't working properly.
Anyway, pain signals allow our body to communicate *directly* with "us" - then we can decide what course of action to take. We can choose to burn our hand without spasming at all if we choose to. Or we can let the reflex take over and allow our arm to jump. The pain is necessary because it means "STOP DOING THAT!!!" - otherwise curious kids would just keep on doing that for fun (as I explained earlier).
And for the "STOP DOING THAT!!!!" message to work properly, "we" have to be informed about it, and forced to take it seriously. i.e. assuming that nothing else outweighs it, we are forced to try and avoid that pain signal.

Maybe you didn't understand my "hierarchy of intelligent systems"... I'm saying that processing or programmed systems *aren't* aware (unless they satisfy the requirements for aware systems).
In aware systems, the processing is a result of the system's continuous quest to seek goals and desires (seek programmed "pleasures"and "pains"). It is self-motivated and the beliefs aren't preprogrammed - they are self-learnt.

I'm talking about motivation in a deterministic way. Basically the system associates every possible course of action with a rating and then it selects the option that has the best rating. It does this on a continuous basis and doesn't need people to tell it what to do. That's what I mean by self-motivated. And I'm saying that self-motivation doesn't require awareness or consciousness, but self-motivation is a prerequisite for aware or conscious systems.

I said that a single elementary particle (*on its own*) wouldn't be capable of being conscious. This is because it would require *memories* and also a memory encoding and decoding system as well as the other machinery that is required for consciousness. (sensory inputs, motor outputs)
Maybe all that is possible with quantum physics... but I doubt it.

Yes, I was saying that a *single* particle (e.g. a quark or boson or photon or whatever) wouldn't be able to house an entire conscious system, including memory, in its entirety. But if that particle is combined with many others, it could be used to make a conscious system.

Well I think that memory just involves matter and material processes. I don't see what's so special about it. I'll just start with information... an example is DNA. It is a code that is translated into proteins and cells and body shapes.
Memory involves decoding *and* encoding... I don't know what the simplest example is... but many or all insects have it - they can remember the way back home, etc.

Adrian Selby

"But the consciousness itself cannot be explained as nothing but matter. The consciousness itself is not material and cannot be explained as a material process simpliciter"

I don't see why not, I've tried to say it is simply a property of certain arrangements of matter, more precisely, arrangements that show certain activity. That arrangement, such as a living brain, is conscious. It is material. You'll have to expand more because I'm obviously missing something. Insofar as the above is an explanation of some sort for why consciousness is nothing but matter, because when the arrangements aren't there the consciousness isn't there, I guess I need you to make more clear why this is insufficient.

"A rock may not have consciousness, but the material in the rock has the potential to create consciousness when it is arranged in the proper configurations. That what I mean by "proto-consciousness.""

Are you saying that proto consciousness means, among other things, a rock can be conscious when its configurations are completely altered, only it strikes me that the rock will stop being a rock, given the amount of change that would need to be undergone before it started looking like, well, a brain. If I define a rock as just this arrangement of molecules of certain elements, then if I have to change that in order to replicate systems that are conscious am I not unmaking the rock. I would not then say a rock could be conscious if my definition of a rock related to its molecular structure, if I also agree that it is only certain molecular structures of certain elements and compounds that display signs of consciousness. With that definition the rock would no longer be a rock, and could not therefore be said to have the potential for consciousness, though the matter, if changed radically, could. I don't know enough about chemistry to make assertions about the chemical composition of rocks, and whether we're talking about having to re-arrange atoms, or whether it is simply impossible to make a sliver of granite into a neuron.

Adrian

boneyard bill

excreationist writes:

It's not mysterious but it isn't a reductive explanation either. The color orange remains an immaterial phenomenon. A reductive explanation would show that the color orange is a material process.

I know what the pain means. That has nothing to do with whether or not it is a material process.

No I don't. But that is as far as the materialist can go with an explanation. You're trying to argue with me, but the points you're making support my position.

Fine. But it has nothing to do with a reductive explanation of consciousness. Are the programmed pleasures and pains you're talking about material or not?

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

But that's what I'VE been saying! Yes, consciousnes is a property of certain arrangements of matter. But it ISN'T matter or a material process. It is something else that is caused by these arrangements.

You see, electricity isn't a property of flowing electrons. Electricity and flowing electrons are the same thing. On the other hand, gravity is a property of massive bodies. Early materialists wanted to explain gravity as matter. They sought a reductive explanation in terms of some process like a vortex or a vacuum. They rejected Newton's explanation because they claimed that "action at a distance" wasn't possible. But they finally had to accept the law of gravity as a fundamental axiom. It cannot be reduced to anything more material. Now, that fundamental axiom, gravity, is used to explain other parts of the materialist system. It's now part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. And I'm saying that we should do the same thing with consciousness. But just as materialists had to accept that action at a distance was possible, we would now have to accept that everything isn't material.

Yes. A rock, presumably, would have to be something very unlike a rock before it could manifest anything remotely like what we call consciousness. That's why I use the term "proto-consciousness."

The point is that consciousness is an inherent quality of matter. So when we say that the firing of c-fiber x produces the color orange, we've said all there is to say. We accept it as a fundamental fact of nature. Now we can use that, perhaps, to explain other processes, and we have no need to explain the color orange as some material process. We accept that it is immaterial even though it is produced by matter.

Now most people on this web site are willing to go along with that until you bring up the ontological cost. The ontological cost is that you have to give up materialism and accept that matter possesses, as an inherent quality, incipient consciousness.

This is because that is implied by the axiom itself. When you say that matter causes mind, you're also making a statement about the nature of matter.

excreationist

I'll just try using another example... bees can learn which flowers give them a lot of food and which don't based on the colour of the flower.
Over the course of a few weeks it might learn that a certain species of flower, which we call an "orange" flower, has a lot of food (nectar or whatever). Another species, which we call a "dark purple" flower, might have hardly any food.
So it would have memories of these different flowers based on the signals it got from its eyes. So say it is flying around one day, and sees a dark purple flower. Information from its eyes would pass to its brain and this would trigger the memory that it doesn't have much food. So it would fly on just in case there was something better later on. Then it might see an orange flower and compare the information from its eyes to its memory and since this is associated with a memory of having lots of food, it would seek that flower. Anyway, "orange" is a fuzzy range of colour information that is based on the data we get from our eyes. It is based on the limitations of what our eyes sense. Without our eyes and our brain there is no "orange" in the world. A physical system is required to detect and classify the concept of "orange". Animals can be hard-coded to seek or avoid particular "colours" which are also based on what their eyes detect. Do you think that what bees do is a material process?

I was talking about the function of pain from a first-person perspective using non-technical language to try and be more clear about the connection between the sensation of pain and looking at motivational systems from a third-person perspective.
From a third person perspective, a self-motivated system seeks or avoids certain things. To the system those things are "desirable" or "undesirable". The system repeats or avoids the situations depending on the intensities of the signals. I said things like "that's BAD! That signal must be avoided NOW!!!" to try and show the function that an intense pain signal has to a self-motivated system. So there is a compulsion for the system to do something NOW (if it is intense pain). It isn't a vague reminder that there is a problem. That is what mild discomfort is. Intense pain is an URGENT REMINDER! Like RED ALERT! DANGER! BATTLE STATIONS!!!

Motivational systems are capable of responding to danger very quickly. Intense pain is used to get the brain's attention and to direct its focus towards *urgent* problems (though in the case of a stubbed toe it isn't really urgent).

So intense pain involves urgent problem solving involving major problems. Mild discomfort is about non-urgent problems.

Urgent major problems include having a shark bite your leg. You need to be informed straight-away that there is a really major problem... it can't wait at all - it should have your highest priority.

Ok, here's another example....
Say a person is body-boarding in rough away and kicking away. Then say a shark swims up behind them and bites one of their feet off. If they didn't feel any pain, they wouldn't even notice at all! There would be so much noise from the ocean that they wouldn't hear anything. Their feet would be shaking anyway, because they were kicking already. The water would be rough so they wouldn't notice any extra turbulence.
So then the shark might bite off their legs before they notice that something is going on.
On the other hand, if they received an intense pain signal that compelled them to try and avoid it NOW, they'd first try and find the cause of it and then try and stop the cause.
So they'd instantly turn around and see the shark and maybe throw the body board at it and scream for help and swim straight for the shore.
Our ancestors needed to be forced to respond to problems right NOW - not several seconds later.

Yes it does... aware systems are part of what makes up a conscious system. That's why it is reductive - it is split into parts.

They are material processes that involve a situation being evaluated and this signal (the evaluation of how desirable or undesirable) is sent to a central coordinator where it repeats/seeks or avoids (or ignores) situations depending on the signals.
Pleasures and pains are just signals that have a function in a system if it is organised properly. On their own, these signals are just an electrical or chemical impulse. In the same way, animals might use their neurons to remember lots of things, but these neurons on their own are just neurons but as a system they have a function.

crocodile deathroll

True to a point, but what about phantom limb pains? The nerve fibers in the case of an amputated foot have quite obviously been cut, and the pain in that "ex-foot" is not a physical event if that foot does not exist, or it may instead be just overridden by a kind of pain in the brain. Or are phantom limb pains caused by the peripheral nervous system rewiring itself?

crocodile deathroll

excreationist

I see what you're saying... you explained it pretty well there.
But I disagree. Gravity doesn't just affect large objects... it affects ALL objects, including photons! (I don't know if the gravity that photons exert has been measured though)
If consciousness is such a fundamental property of matter, why do brains have to be so organized and complex to be conscious? I mean with gravity, you've just got to have a big object (like the moon) and the effects of gravity are obvious.
In the case of gravity, it is just related to its mass. All the other fundamental forces (there are 4) have fairly well-defined equations.

BTW, I was wondering what you think about a fertilized egg. Is it conscious? If not, then when does it become conscious? I'd like to hear what your views are on this. If a fertilized egg is conscious, what about a sperm cell and an egg cell? If they are both conscious, what about partially developed sperm and egg cells?

And once you've got an approximate point when non-developed humans become conscious, what is different between the person before and after they are conscious? Do they have more neurons? Or more knowledge or what?

excreationist

It is like a hallucination I think... in the case of a hallucination the retinas don't sense those pictures, but later on in the brain faulty neurons fire for some reason and the brain thinks these pictures came from our eyes. In the case of phantom limb pain, there is no nerve at the phantom limb, but higher up a neuron is being stimulated something and that neuron is inbetween the phantom limb and the brain. And the brain interprets this as being a message from the limb.

Adrian Selby

"But that's what I'VE been saying! Yes, consciousnes is a property of certain arrangements of matter. But it ISN'T matter or a material process. It is something else that is caused by these arrangements."

That's not what I'm trying to say. My problem here was using the word property, I was tired. Let's see if I can rephrase and express myself more clearly.

I want to say that consciousness to the brain is like electricity to a flow of electrons. In either case we have one actual thing. A thing we call a brain and a 'thing' we call a flow of electrons (though as I argue below, I'm not reducing one way of talking to another, I'm just trying to use the words that most objectively describe these physical objects or events). We use words like neural nets in an attempt to describe the parts of the brain from an anatomical or biological point of view. We also have words such as consciousness which are quite vague and refer to the things that functioning brains do, which is process signals and send other signals and all this on an immediate and non-immediate, reflexive and immensely complex level.

In the same way one cannot say there is a flow of electrons which is physical, and there is electricity which is not, one cannot say of a brain that it is physical but consciousness is not. To be a functioning brain is to be conscious, it is not 'to be a functioning brain and then have consciousness as well'. I've tried to explain that the distinction between consciousness and the brain isn't real, its simply words, concepts that are parts of vocabularies we have for different purposes, even when these sometimes cross over.

"Consciousness is a material process". In saying that I'm saying one description of a functioning brain is equivalent to another description which has different uses. I'm not trying to imply that consciousness is a thing that is reducible to material processes, I'm saying its not a thing at all, there is only one thing, a functioning brain.

Now, you've talked about pain and about orange, and how these things aren't reducible to physical processes. My problem here is the way you're thinking about the issue. Orange and c-fiber firing are both describing a physical event in a functioning brain. Neither refers to anything more, for me. When I think about the nature of a functioning brain, I have in mind something that, when attached to a body, is something so complex that its responses to the environment are very refined, reflexive and adaptive. This refinement stretches to self consciousness, and its an object capable of what we can call remembering, and also call 'x, y and z neural nets structure stimulated into responding in a certain way repeatedly over time, in virtue of the continual nature of its processing and its internal structure which I cannot fully describe.

Because its so complex and able to communicate with the body through making noises, it organises its responses in order to communicate, and words are formed, discrete noises that are arranged to allow it to better survive with others of the species. These noises might one day sound like the word 'consciousness' and are given a referent, namely, *taps side of head* and equates to another set of words that describe various behaviours, most recently of which, beyond the limbs, was measurement of brain activity. But I think it would be wrong to hear the word consciousness, and having heard various other words like neuron begin to think there are things that aren't physical, non physical properties of physical things. It's just ways of talking about physical things.

Again, my apologies for recently having not been clinical in my language, I should be considering I think the issue rests on the use of language. I may try to revisit my posts along this thread and your responses to see if I can better clarify the problems. I am certainly not presenting a position where a physical property has a causal relationship with a non physical one, which is dualism.

Adrian

boneyard bill

excreationist writes:

So you're trying to base a reductive explanation on memory. But your explanation evades the fundamental point. Why, whether through direct experience or through memory, does our observation take the form that it does? We take in the information "orange." Now we recall that information. But why, then, do we recall it as a visual experience? You've just shifted the problem from our direct observation to our recall of previous observations. Still, it does explain why the experience of orange is nothing put a material process.

Consider a very sophisticated modern submarine. It gets hit with a torpedo in the right bow. The computer automatically takes in the information and directs the proper hatches to be closed and undertakes the proper measures to stabilize the craft. We don't need to program the submarine to feel any pain. The information is all that is necessary. The same should be true of humans. But in any case, none of this leads to a reductive explanation. It just addresses the function of consciousness. That is an important question also, but not the one we're addressing.

Yes. Sometimes we get information in the form of pain. But why do we get it in this form? We don't need to get information this way. The materialist can explain how we would be able to function by just getting the information but without feeling the pain. Still, this relates to the function of consciousness and not to a reductive explanation.

But that's not what reductive means in this context. It's not about reducing to parts; it's about reducing the apparently immaterial to the material. It's about showing that consciousness is nothing but some material process.

You're not going to be able to come up with a material explanation by using mental terms like "desirable" and "undesirable."