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Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

nytimes.com

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Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#171

Post by PinkMilkshake »

iainmerrick wrote: post #92
PinkMilkshake wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems more like a definition for intelligence or learning. My favourite definition for consciousness is the following: If it is something to be like a particular thing, then that thing is conscious. If it is something to be like a bat, then a bat is conscious. If it isn’t something to be like a bat - the “lights are off” so to speak - then it’s not conscious. Edit: clarity

From Thomas Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?", right? At least as you've stated it, that's a circular definition.

It was from a conversation between two neuroscientists. They were talking about Nagel earlier in the discussion. I don’t know if Nagel came up with that definition though. Could you explain how the way I stated it is circular?

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#172

Post by red75prime »

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #170
red75prime wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably couldn't use this definition even if you had a magical device which transforms you into a bat and then back again. After you are yourself again you'll need to interpret the acquired memories. You remember echolocview of the room (bats have memory, it's testable), hunger, disorientation and some other sensations. Does it mean that bat is conscious? What will you remember differently if bat wasn't consciou…

But the definition isn’t if it is like something for a human to be a bat . Human experience doesn’t really come into it. It is like something to be a human. But the conscious experience of a bat (if it exists) may be completely alien to us in every way. That’s not relevant to what it is to be like a bat. The only important thing is if it is like something to be a bat.

What's good in a definition you have no conceivable way of applying? How would you go about testing whether a bat is conscious according to this definition?

It is based on our illusion of understanding what it is like to be a human, but upon closer inspection it bears no real content.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#173

Post by alexmat »

jamesrcole wrote: post #99
alexmat wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still experience "free will" without invalidating the materialist point of view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_model

> You can still experience "free will" if you have to put quotes around it, is it really free will? I had a look at that link and I don't see anything related to free will there... what's the link you're suggesting?

The quotes are there to indicate that the free will is there but only as a convenient abstraction.

"The idea of the self over time [...] is the property of phenomenal selfhood that plays the most important role in creating the fictional self and the first person perspective. Metzinger defines the first person perspective as the “existence of single coherent and temporally stable model of reality which is representationally centered around or on a single coherent and temporally stable phenomenal subject”."

Free will in this sense is used to model reality in the form of subjective experience, part of which includes ownership of self. In other words we experience free will as a property of our model of reality, but it does not exist outside this abstraction. Objectively we are causally determined, subjectively we experience free will as part of the modeling process by the brain to create predictions about how it should respond to external stimuli.

Self is an abstraction inside a simulation, it does not map onto reality directly. But since our subjective reality is the simulation, we will always experience ourselves as having free will barring a brain disorder, such as the ones mentioned in the wiki link: "Disorders of the self model are implicated in several disorders including schizophrenia, autism, and depersonalization."

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#174

Post by jamesrcole »

alexmat wrote: post #173
jamesrcole wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can still experience "free will" if you have to put quotes around it, is it really free will? I had a look at that link and I don't see anything related to free will there... what's the link you're suggesting?

The quotes are there to indicate that the free will is there but only as a convenient abstraction. "The idea of the self over time [...] is the property of phenomenal selfhood that plays the most important role in creating the fictional self and the first person perspective. Metzinger defines the first person perspective as the “existence of single coherent and temporally stable model of reality which is representati…

I don't think there is actual free will, and I think the appearances of it is just how our minds present things to us -- that is, I basically agree with the description you give.

But I object to statements like:

> the free will is there but only as a convenient abstraction.

Here's an analogy to illustrate my objection. It's inaccurate to say that the person Santa Claus literally exists but only as a mental concept.

The accurate way to put it is that the Santa Claus person doesn't literally exist but we have mental concepts describing such a person.

Free will doesn't exist but we have a mental concept of such a thing.

That's the honest way to put it.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#175

Post by lisper »

ph4 wrote: post #167
lisper wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are not arbitrary cutoffs. They are universally agreed upon conventions among speakers of English, and they give effective meaning to the words "short" and "tall". Quibbling over that is pure pedantry.

Convention = arbitary. It's conventional. For convenience. Relative. Not absolute. Same as your lines defining what is and isn't conscious.

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/569/2/Stoppard.pdf

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#176

Post by nezzle »

klmr wrote: post #144
nezzle wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet this is the same type of work people are using to argue that that crabs/fish can feel/experience pain. Proving or disproving consciousness is basically impossible. E.g. I feel like a lot of people aren't conscious :) Prove me right or wrong?

> Yet this is the same type of work people are using to argue that that crabs/fish can feel/experience pain. Not really: a fundamental requirement in the assessment of pain reception in animals is the presence and stimulation of nociceptors (pain receptors). Plants don’t have any nerves, so they fundamentally lack pain reception. It’s entirely possible that they have developed an alternative system to experience pain…

We could connect a nociceptor to a computer. Does the computer now experience pain?

Just because the mechanism exists for sedation or pain does not imply the experience of consciousness or pain.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#177

Post by nezzle »

hux_ wrote: post #88
nezzle wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet this is the same type of work people are using to argue that that crabs/fish can feel/experience pain. Proving or disproving consciousness is basically impossible. E.g. I feel like a lot of people aren't conscious :) Prove me right or wrong?

So would you allow me to chop up someone you have decided is unconscious? If the answer is no, why?

I shared the impossibility of making such a decision with any degree of certainty.

But we have to eat. I'm no longer sure what's more ethical: eating something dead meat or vegetables that are still alive.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#178

Post by alexmat »

jamesrcole wrote: post #174
alexmat wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quotes are there to indicate that the free will is there but only as a convenient abstraction. "The idea of the self over time [...] is the property of phenomenal selfhood that plays the most important role in creating the fictional self and the first person perspective. Metzinger defines the first person perspective as the “existence of single coherent and temporally stable model of reality which is representati…

I don't think there is actual free will, and I think the appearances of it is just how our minds present things to us -- that is, I basically agree with the description you give. But I object to statements like: > the free will is there but only as a convenient abstraction. Here's an analogy to illustrate my objection. It's inaccurate to say that the person Santa Claus literally exists but only as a mental concept. T…

I think that's a fair point. I usually phrase it that way to avoid coming off too strong to people whose beliefs are unknown to me.

So to sum up, we agree that the concept of free will exists and is experienced, but it is just a mechanism that the brain uses to navigate and make decisions about a dynamic environment and not free will in the classical sense of having control over the decisions we make.

Honestly, after writing that out, I agree even more strongly with you! I think we should relegate the term "free will" to the classic definition and adopt Metzinger's vocabulary for the new metaphysical concepts. Then it's very simple, there is no free will, but there is a Phenomenal Self Model that the brain relies on which can be conflated with classical free will.

I will endeavor to be more clear in the future. Thanks!

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#179

Post by iainmerrick »

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #171
iainmerrick wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Thomas Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?", right? At least as you've stated it, that's a circular definition.

It was from a conversation between two neuroscientists. They were talking about Nagel earlier in the discussion. I don’t know if Nagel came up with that definition though. Could you explain how the way I stated it is circular?

If it isn’t something to be like a bat - the “lights are off” so to speak - then it’s not conscious.

I guess I'm focusing more on the "lights are off" part, although that's just an aside. "Conscious" and "lights are on" seem like alternate ways of saying exactly the same thing.

Nagel's "is it like something to be" terminology has always struck me as wilfully contorted and confusing, but amounting to the same thing again -- you're conscious if you're conscious. It doesn't help us explain consciousness and it doesn't even help figure out what things are conscious and which aren't. Is a plant conscious, or a rock? Writers can certainly imagine what it might be like to be those things.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#180

Post by klmr »

nezzle wrote: post #176
klmr wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet this is the same type of work people are using to argue that that crabs/fish can feel/experience pain. Not really: a fundamental requirement in the assessment of pain reception in animals is the presence and stimulation of nociceptors (pain receptors). Plants don’t have any nerves, so they fundamentally lack pain reception. It’s entirely possible that they have developed an alternative system to experience pain…

We could connect a nociceptor to a computer. Does the computer now experience pain? Just because the mechanism exists for sedation or pain does not imply the experience of consciousness or pain.

I’m not arguing that. I’m arguing that a nociceptor is necessary but not sufficient to argue for pain experience. And plants don’t even fulfil this basic, necessary criterion. So the “type of work” shown in the article isn’t the same kind of evidence conventionally used to argue for pain experience.
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