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Is Consciousness Everywhere?

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Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#21

Post by namero999 »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #13

I have one problem with consciousness is everywhere argument. Namely, if everything down to ants is conscious - how lucky are we to end up experiencing the world as humans? The chances are just too small for me to accept it at face value.

An easy resolution of this doubt lays in definition. Do not mix up phenomenal consciousness with meta-consciousness or self-referential consciousness. Clearly, only humans are meta-conscious. Homo sapiens-sapiens, the man who knows that knows. It's our defining characteristic and leads to all sorts of amazing things are we can witness.

Mere phenomenal consciousness is anywhere _in living creatures_ so that even a bacterium can be said to be conscious (it reacts to light sources, for example, and is able to detect nutrients).

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#22

Post by canoebuilder »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #13

I have one problem with consciousness is everywhere argument. Namely, if everything down to ants is conscious - how lucky are we to end up experiencing the world as humans? The chances are just too small for me to accept it at face value.

Maybe one aspect of ant consciousness is humans thinking, "hmm what is it like to be an ant?"

And maybe one aspect of human consciousness is ants thinking, "hmm what are these large things that seem to leave sugary refuse in their wake?"

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#23

Post by jstanley »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #13

I have one problem with consciousness is everywhere argument. Namely, if everything down to ants is conscious - how lucky are we to end up experiencing the world as humans? The chances are just too small for me to accept it at face value.

Can you clarify? You find the probability that you are human, conditional on already being human, to be too small to accept?

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#24

Post by TriNetra »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #13

I have one problem with consciousness is everywhere argument. Namely, if everything down to ants is conscious - how lucky are we to end up experiencing the world as humans? The chances are just too small for me to accept it at face value.

How about you start with a premise that you're a drop in the ocean of consciousness which is eternal, imperishable – the ocean was always there and so it'll always be in future – what about if it's even beyond time because time is a construct of the mind and consciousness is subtler than the mind. Now you have infinite time to take different manifestations as per your desires.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#25

Post by tgv »

By what possible commonly agreed upon definition could consciousness be equal to experience? The only result of accepting that definition would be having to invent a new name for what I (and I believe many with me) call consciousness, as badly defined as it is.

To put it in the words of Syndrome: if everything is conscious, nothing is.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#26

Post by meepmorp »

cambalache wrote: post #15
geophile wrote: post #12

I have been hearing about Koch, and Tononi, and panpsychism, and phi for years now, in these articles summarizing consciousness for laymen, (a group that includes me). And these very long articles bloviate but never go any further than giving a facile description of phi, claiming that this IIT "theory" is testable, and then not saying how it could be tested. The articles from five years ago and this one seem intercha…

You are no missing anything. Reputations in academy are not only made by being correct and inventive. You can go pretty far if you know how to dress-up bullshit.

I completely agree, and would only point out that the ability to get far on properly calibrated bullshit is a well established phenomenon throughout human history.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#27

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

namero999 wrote: post #21
kkoncevicius wrote: post #13

I have one problem with consciousness is everywhere argument. Namely, if everything down to ants is conscious - how lucky are we to end up experiencing the world as humans? The chances are just too small for me to accept it at face value.

An easy resolution of this doubt lays in definition. Do not mix up phenomenal consciousness with meta-consciousness or self-referential consciousness. Clearly, only humans are meta-conscious. Homo sapiens-sapiens, the man who knows that knows. It's our defining characteristic and leads to all sorts of amazing things are we can witness. Mere phenomenal consciousness is anywhere _in living creatures_ so that even a bac…

> Clearly, only humans are meta-conscious.

I like how you clearly define these differences. But tow do you know other creatures are not meta-conscious?

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#28

Post by kkoncevicius »

jstanley wrote: post #23
kkoncevicius wrote: post #13

I have one problem with consciousness is everywhere argument. Namely, if everything down to ants is conscious - how lucky are we to end up experiencing the world as humans? The chances are just too small for me to accept it at face value.

Can you clarify? You find the probability that you are human, conditional on already being human, to be too small to accept?

Not quite - I find the hypothesis for "consciousness is everywhere" to be too hard to accept based on the observation that I ended up as human (assuming that humans are somehow "higher" than other being of course).

Or stated a bit fancier - the p-value of the null "consciousness is everywhere" is astronomically small, given this observation of me ending up as a human.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#29

Post by waterheater »

One of the stranger theories of consciousness I've come across over the years is that of John Grandy. His primary hypothesis is that DNA itself is the source of consciousness. He tends to self-cite (rarely a good approach and only weakens his ideas from the perspective of an independent observer), but comparing the ideas in OP's article with Grandy's has got me thinking.

"The Role of DNA in Conscious Systems" by John Grandy: http://publicationslist.org/data/john.grandy/ref-42/The%20Ro...

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#30

Post by namero999 »

meepmorp wrote: post #26
cambalache wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are no missing anything. Reputations in academy are not only made by being correct and inventive. You can go pretty far if you know how to dress-up bullshit.

I completely agree, and would only point out that the ability to get far on properly calibrated bullshit is a well established phenomenon throughout human history.

But then the onus is on those who sense it to point out said bullshit.
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