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Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

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Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#231

Post by mannykannot »

ethanbond wrote: post #177
metabagel wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know what consciousness is. It's our self-awareness. We don't know where it comes from our how to test it, because each individual can only observe their own consciousness.

> We know what consciousness is. It's our self-awareness Not really. There are plenty of disorders that destroy a person’s self-awareness but appear to leave a fully conscious person there anyway.

I believe you are right to say that consciousness is generally regarded as more than self-awareness, but unless you want to regard self-awareness as specifically not a form of consciousness, then the consciousness of the people with the disorder you refer to are missing something - something that I believe was of great importance in the evolution of the human mind.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#232

Post by nathan_compton »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #44
nathan_compton wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience smart people are pretty dumb. In seriousness, though, its hard for me to believe that there would be a lot of variation in this among neuroscientists, who I would expect to answer yes only to humans and animals. Like consciousness isn't exactly as big of a mystery as its made out to be. To begin with its a genuine observable phenomenon in an informal way: we identify people as conscious more or less…

Consciousness is observable huh? By rights you are a philosophical zombie, and only your passing resemblance to me - who I know from first principles possesses consciousness - gives even an inkling that you possess actual consciousness. You are suffering from the a little knowledge is a dangerous thing trap. This rabbit hole goes much deeper than you think, you just haven't developed awareness to recognize that yet.

Yes, I too went to high school. If you think "what if philosophical zombies!?" is the extent of the philosophy and science of consciousness, well, I don't know what to tell you.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#233

Post by ethanbond »

mannykannot wrote: post #231
ethanbond wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We know what consciousness is. It's our self-awareness Not really. There are plenty of disorders that destroy a person’s self-awareness but appear to leave a fully conscious person there anyway.

I believe you are right to say that consciousness is generally regarded as more than self-awareness, but unless you want to regard self-awareness as specifically not a form of consciousness, then the consciousness of the people with the disorder you refer to are missing something - something that I believe was of great importance in the evolution of the human mind.

Yeah, my understanding is that it's highly undesirable to have no sense of self-awareness.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#234

Post by ethanbond »

aleksiy123 wrote: post #187
ethanbond wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t think “is dog conscious” is relevant to how we treat dogs?

Yeah I actually don't. If we learned that dogs where less conscious or even not conscious would you be okay with treating them poorly? What I am really saying is I don't think people love their dogs because of there level of consciousness. Its everything else that matters.

Would it affect what laws we have in place to protect dogs?

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#235

Post by dekhn »

dgoodell wrote: post #95
a13o wrote: post #54

We never bothered to define consciousness with any scientific rigor, so why not? It's common for things that are everywhere, to also be nowhere at all. Could the cosmos, in fact, be smurpity-badoingo?

Why is it so hard for people to understand that you can’t have productive discussions about things that you haven’t solidly defined?

human history is filled with examples of important discoveries based on productive discussions about things we haven't solidly defined. I have found that the further I stay from those areas, the happier I am.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#236

Post by coldblues »

phantompeace wrote: post #228
coldblues wrote: post #146

I believe consciousness is on a spectrum of self-awareness. It just exists, perhaps even without evolutionary need. Even if you act mainly on instinct or even purely you could still very well be conscious. You will continue to exist as long as conscious life is able to propagate. For me, it makes sense that a state of nonexistence can't exist. Your consciousness is not unique, it's only a physical phenomena, thus it…

> I also believe consciousness is not quantifiable, but shared, and you just have a narrow perspective at a time. I agree, but I would go 1 step further and say: we are all human, yet experience life as individual beings rather than the sum of the species. Similarly, we are all alive and conscious, as the trees in the forest, as the bugs that dwell within, and as the bacteria that dwell within the bugs. It’s all happ…

Interesting take, but I have a purely physicalist viewpoint. I don't think the religious aspect has anything to do with it, and can be simply explained by them literally believing things have souls and are conscious.

I believe there is a case of conjoined twins where they are sharing the same brain part, having two brains, being able to feel each other's stimuli and emotions, although I've only heard of it.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#238

Post by digging »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #203
digging wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - quantum uncertainty gives us the assumption that everything is fundamentally random and nothing is deterministic, unless we assume a meta-determinism (or superdeterminism) whereby fundamentally random outcomes are actually predetermined. How does that relate with the experience of decision making? That's a complete unknown. But the simplest explanation is that free will is simple, once we define it as "the exper…

The world would look a lot different if everything was random. Ever seen noise on a TV?

Quantum properties are randomly determined from a set of possible outcomes. (e.g if you measure "up vs down" you will never get "left", but it's physically impossible to know if it will be "up" or "down" until measurement.)

They also happen in context, not in a vacuum. Whether or not I make another cup of coffee might come down to fundamentally random quantum events, but that doesn't mean there's any chance I get up and brew a cup of steamy elephant piss because I don't have any on hand.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#239

Post by digging »

JohnAaronNelson wrote: post #208
digging wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - quantum uncertainty gives us the assumption that everything is fundamentally random and nothing is deterministic, unless we assume a meta-determinism (or superdeterminism) whereby fundamentally random outcomes are actually predetermined. How does that relate with the experience of decision making? That's a complete unknown. But the simplest explanation is that free will is simple, once we define it as "the exper…

I’m reading the book “determined” right now. It’s pretty good and sums up all the arguments very nicely. And of course we don’t have free will. We have experience, which fools us into thinking we are in control.

> And of course we don’t have free will. We have experience, which fools us into thinking we are in control.

Not sure if you're disagreeing with me, or if you didn't grasp my comment. The quote above is meaningless without defining what free will is and how it can possibly mean anything other than "the experience of decision making".

Decision-making is something that a fully deterministic, non-conscious machine can do. (A motion detector performs decision making based on light input.) Decision-making does not require consciousness. Consciousness is what grants us the ability to experience and reflect on our decision making. It is fair to call that phenomenon "free will."

Defining "free will" as "the ability to make a decision not influenced by our state and inputs (including sensation, memory, etc.)" makes no sense. Decisions are fundamentally dependent on state and inputs*. Any definition of "free will" which ignores that is useless.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#240

Post by CuriouslyC »

nathan_compton wrote: post #232
CuriouslyC wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness is observable huh? By rights you are a philosophical zombie, and only your passing resemblance to me - who I know from first principles possesses consciousness - gives even an inkling that you possess actual consciousness. You are suffering from the a little knowledge is a dangerous thing trap. This rabbit hole goes much deeper than you think, you just haven't developed awareness to recognize that yet.

Yes, I too went to high school. If you think "what if philosophical zombies!?" is the extent of the philosophy and science of consciousness, well, I don't know what to tell you.

Yet you don't understand the difference between fMRI neural correlates and "understanding how consciousness is created"
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