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How working memory could give rise to consciousness

scientificamerican.com

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Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#51

Post by vidarh »

oersted wrote: post #35
albertize wrote: post #8

In this article, the concept of working memory accounts for not consciousness but the accessibility, stability and reportability of certain contents. For example, when I am reading very carefully, I may not be concentrating on the ambient sounds, my bodily position, my peripheral vision, and the environment of the room. These contents may not have to be retained in working memory in any way as relevant information fo…

Yes I think it’s a linguistic confusion more than anything else. To me, consciousness is not generally that you can be aware (conscious) of things around you and can react to them, lots of things can do that. Consciousness is a shorthand for saying that something is conscious of itself, or conscious of its own consciousness. It is the meta-ability to observe its own perceptions and thoughts. And a sense of self, a se…

I tend to prefer the term subjective experience for what you describe as a meta-ability.

Consciousness is too overloaded by conflicting definitions.

We could at least imagine the possibility of something coming across as conscious in every way without having a subjective experience of self.

Even a fully deterministic view of consciousness can be compatible with a possible split between entities that act-as-if but without a subjective experience, and those with.

The problem is that there is no reasonable way to prove a subjective experience - we're stuck self reporting. We can't even prove other humans have subjective experience.

It is also not clear that it matters of such entities can act identically.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#52

Post by vidarh »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #40
oersted wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I think it’s a linguistic confusion more than anything else. To me, consciousness is not generally that you can be aware (conscious) of things around you and can react to them, lots of things can do that. Consciousness is a shorthand for saying that something is conscious of itself, or conscious of its own consciousness. It is the meta-ability to observe its own perceptions and thoughts. And a sense of self, a se…

> It is the meta-ability to observe its own perceptions and thoughts. And a sense of self, a sense that the observer is the same over time. Which is kind of strange because folks who achieve insight examining their own perceptions and thoughts seem to dissolve the barrier between self and not-self.

But even then most such reports still effectively claim a subjective experience.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#53

Post by estearum »

evilduck wrote: post #43
thansz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not thoroughly understanding consciousness doesn't mean we can't create it. All sorts of phenomena are created without an understanding of the underlying mechanism. The entire animal kingdom, including us humans, have been creating conscious beings (babies) without understanding how consciousness actually works. Of course, understanding the mechanism is helpful if you want control, reliability, and precision over the…

Seems like the entire field of alchemy and later chemistry was precluded by a "oh wow" or "that's interesting" or "help, I can't breath", not derivations from first principals. Throwing stuff together just to see what happens and then working backwards from interesting outcomes to recreate and understand those interesting outcomes seems like a perfectly valid if not chaotic approach for happening upon artificial cons…

The entire field of modern pharmaceuticals is still not too far from what you're describing. Lots of drugs people use every day (with established clinical effect) we still don't know how they actually work.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#54

Post by estearum »

hackingonempty wrote: post #27
cloudie78 wrote: post #22

We can’t define or measure consciousness - because we haven’t discovered how. So, we can’t define or measure it, but we can create it? How do you create that which is not definable or measurable?

Consciousness is what the brain is doing. I look forward to more precise definitions.

The definition of consciousness is quite clear IMO: "it is something to be that thing."

What's not clear is what causes it and how to evaluate whether someone/something else "has" it.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#55

Post by estearum »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #21
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any references for these claims? I’m also curious how you define consciousness.

> I’m also curious how you define consciousness. This is what I came here for. Every article or commenter that attempts to deduce the roots of consciousness should first start by defining it. I have yet to see anyone even bother to seriously try. If I spent all my time trying to figure out the fundamental forces involved in floopityjoop, but refused to ever define exactly what a floopityjoop was, you would ignore me,…

Well consciousness has the "advantage"/curse of the fact that we all know it exists. We just can't prove it to each other.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#56

Post by kelseyfrog »

vidarh wrote: post #52
kelseyfrog wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the meta-ability to observe its own perceptions and thoughts. And a sense of self, a sense that the observer is the same over time. Which is kind of strange because folks who achieve insight examining their own perceptions and thoughts seem to dissolve the barrier between self and not-self.

But even then most such reports still effectively claim a subjective experience.

There's gotta be at least a few stream enterers here who can clarify

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#57

Post by hackingonempty »

mellosouls wrote: post #42
hackingonempty wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness is what the brain is doing. I look forward to more precise definitions.

That's very imprecise, and not at all convincing. Eg. 1. The brain "does cognition". Cognition consciousness. 2. Some philosophical theories have consciousness pre-figuring complex arrangements like the brain. ie. The brain is not necessarily a pre-requisite for consciousness.

> ie. The brain is not necessarily a pre-requisite for consciousness.

I'm not saying brains are the only way to produce consciousness, just that the evidence shows that they are the way animals do here on Earth.

It is extremely unlikely that there is something else involved.

> There is certainly much of physics remaining to be discovered, but in the specific regime covering the particles and forces that make up human beings and their environments, we have good reason to think that all of the ingredients and their dynamics are understood to extremely high precision (Carroll 2021a). Modern physics, in other words, provides evidence for what philosophers call “causal closure of the physical”: physical events have purely physical causes (Loewer 1995, Papineau 1995), at least in the regime relevant to human life. Without dramatically upending our understanding of quantum field theory, there is no room for any new influences that could bear on the problem of consciousness.

https://philpapers.org/archive/CARCAT-33.pdf

(author is now Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins)

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#58

Post by mapontosevenths »

estearum wrote: post #55
mapontosevenths wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m also curious how you define consciousness. This is what I came here for. Every article or commenter that attempts to deduce the roots of consciousness should first start by defining it. I have yet to see anyone even bother to seriously try. If I spent all my time trying to figure out the fundamental forces involved in floopityjoop, but refused to ever define exactly what a floopityjoop was, you would ignore me,…

Well consciousness has the "advantage"/curse of the fact that we all know it exists. We just can't prove it to each other.

Nah. "Cogito, ergo sum" is obviously wrong if we think about it for even a moment. It's a thought terminating tautology at best.

A) Just because there is thinking it does not follow that there is an "I" doing it.

B) Perceiving something does not in and of itself prove that either the thing or the perciever are "real". Some things are real without being perceived, and some things are perceived that aren't real.

C) Even if we grant the reality of the "I", What is the thing that is perceiving the "I" which is doing the thinking? We cant trust something that may be a faulty instrument to report on its own actions.So we can't actually be sure that we are thinking and not just falsly remembering that we once thought. See rootkits for an example. If we're starting from first principles (as Descartes intended) we immediately fail because we require an outside observer.

D)Etc.

Basically every major philosopher since Desacrtes has already had a go at this one. I'm sure there are better arguments against it out there already. These are just the few that spring to mind.

Really, its just the place where Descartes gave up, not a universal truth of some sort.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#59

Post by estearum »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #58
estearum wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well consciousness has the "advantage"/curse of the fact that we all know it exists. We just can't prove it to each other.

Nah. "Cogito, ergo sum" is obviously wrong if we think about it for even a moment. It's a thought terminating tautology at best. A) Just because there is thinking it does not follow that there is an "I" doing it. B) Perceiving something does not in and of itself prove that either the thing or the perciever are "real". Some things are real without being perceived, and some things are perceived that aren't real. C) Eve…

I didn’t argue “I think therefore I am.”

I argued “experience therefore consciousness.”

No “I” nor “think” nor “am”

To use your language, perceiving something does in fact necessarily imply there is perception happening.

You’re jumping to Descartes (who was wrong), I am pointing to Nagel (who is correct but not in a way that’s very helpful answering the corollary questions of consciousness)

You presumably know consciousness exists at least in the case of you. I know it exists in the case of me. It’s probably reasonable for each of us to assume it exists in the case of each other.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#60

Post by estearum »

d00d0ff000 wrote: post #48
mapontosevenths wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and just to add to that... It's important. In the past many attempts to define who (or even what) is and is not conscious led to the exclusion of certain classes of human and animal, and from there to atrocity beyond measure. The p-zombie problem is not only fundamental, it may be the single most important question in all of philosophy and science from a "first do no harm" perspective. It's not some academic…

I define consciousness as “the inflection of the potential of existential being.” As my original comment suggests, I claim consciousness as the echo chamber of the quantum domain. Before you call it “quantum magic” understand that the “potential of existence” is the foundation of existential reality and we are “just inflecting” upon this through the electrochemical biotechnology of our brains. I propose all life and…

Good luck drawing a line between life/living systems and otherwise.

The panpsychist answer is (unfortunately) the only one that even remotely passes the sniff test.

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