Ierrellus

According to several modern philosophers, a baby is not conscious because it lacks the criteria for consciousness under certain definitions. By some of these same definitions, grandma is no longer conscious either. She cannot see. She cannot hear. And she thinks the refridgerator is a place where she has to put her shoes.

What is your definition of consciousness? And does your definition include babies and ailing grandmas?

Ierrellus
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[ July 17, 2002: Message edited by: Ierrellus ]</p>

Clutch

Who are the philosophers, what are the criteria, and under what conditions?

Ierrellus

Clutch,

Carruthers, for one, defines consciousness as the abilty to have a theory of mind., i.e., the thought of thought, which excludes baby, ailing grandma and chimpanzees. On the mind/body border thread there are stated opinions that a human baby is not conscious.

Dennett defines consciousness as a hierarchy of subsystems ending with a binary origin. IMO, he is partly right. Consciousness, unconsciousness and dead are our only three mental states we experience. In computer terms this is on, holding and off.

Ierrellus
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Clutch

Thanks. Now, is Carruthers talking about consciousness univocally, or about specifically human self-consciousness? Ie, there is no theory of mind test that, say, rabbits pass. Does Carruthers think that rabbits don't feel pain, for instance? Or is he talking about something rather different.? I don't know how "ending with a binary origin" maps onto Dennett's view of consciousness. (esp, "origin"?). But surely he doesn't define consciousness as a heirarchy of subsystems; he defines it as a sort of functional salience that subpersonal "content reports" can achieve, perhaps only fleetingly. That these reports emerge out of such subsystems is rather a part of his story about the evolution of consciousness, as well as a nod to the empirical data supporting some variety of modularity hypothesis. The theory of consciousness itself is Multiple Drafts/Pandemonium.

DRFseven

I haven't gone back and reread the thread, but in all likelihood, the poster would grant that infants are often conscious, as opposed to being unconscious (as in a coma). A problem stems from there being so many commonly used meanings for the word "conscious." Perhaps the poster referred to "theory of mind" in which the infant is not assumed to be self-conscious because it does not realize that others don't know everything it knows. The "Sally-Anne" test is a Theory of Mind test. The child being tested is shown two dolls, Sally and Anne, and is told that one of them, Sally, has a marble that she hides under a cup. Sally is demonstrated to leave the vicinity and the child is instructed to watch what Anne does.A scene is enacted where the Anne doll takes the marble out from under the cup and places it under a handkerchief. Then the child is asked, "When Sally comes back, where will she look for the cup?" Usually children under the age of three will say "Under the handkerchief.", because they lack Theory of Mind; they don't understand that we can have information in mind that is hidden from others. They think that because [ithey[/i] know the marble is under the handkerchief, everyone knows it.

Clutch

DRF, the thing is, Theory of Mind is hardly less ambiguous than consciousness itself. The False Belief Task (Sally-Anne test) is a good example. It's clear that between the ages of 3 and 4 kids are acquiring *something* that lets them pass the test. But a Theory of Mind is actually a very bad candidate to be the something they acquire, simply because (for instance) many more three year-olds have the ability to lie in rational and sophisticated ways than can pass the FBT, nor are those three year-olds who pass the FBT more accomplished liars. And such lying certainly requires advanced reasoning about what other agents can be expected to know given their perceptual history, and hence how they can be misled reliably. That's as robust an implication of Theory of Mind as one could want -- in a pretty obvious sense of the term. Whatever fascinating ability is isolated by the FBT, it isn't anything naturally described as a theory of mind tout court.

[ July 17, 2002: Message edited by: Clutch ]</p>

Ierrellus

What I am looking for is an answer to the following question. Is a paradigmatic definition of consciousness, which would apply to all organisms expressing this phenomenon, possible? IMO, such a definition is made impossible by the following criteria:

Confusing
1.consciousness with a single brain state
2.any subset of consciousness with its empirical
manifestations
3.non-homologious reference systems with those
that have a homology by use of analogy

There are more. These are a good start.

Ierrellus
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Ierrellus

Block(1995) describes the term "consciousness" as currently defined as a "hybrid' or "mongrel" term.
Can we make the term less amorphous?

Confusion:
4. equates a tool with the structure which the tool produces.

I do not need to reiterate current definitions of consciousness. If interested, there are 1168 papers on consciousness on Chalmers online. Most of the papers, if not trying to sell a personal viewpoint agree with the disarray of opinion in the literature. This is not a love me-love my dogma thread. It is an attempt to find what commonalities would further a definition of consciousness that could be generally acceptable and still open to refutation, pending further discoveries. Yes, I believe a human infant is conscious. So what?!

Ierrellus
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Mr. Sammi

Ierrellus, I would like to nominate : Independent Verification OR independent methods AS a possible aid to fortify consciousness.

It looks edible, it feels soft, but it smells like poop, would you try it?

Sammi Na Boodie (munch munch munchkin)

Ierrellus

Yo, Sammi,

"Consciousness" does not need fortification; it needs a reasonable definition. What are these independent methodologies of examining this problem? You speak only of sense data.

Ierrellus
PAX