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WhatIsConsciousness

Linked from WhatIsWiki.

It seems pretty hard to define what consciousness is. In a way we all know what it is, because we experience it. But do we understand it? Do we know how it works? What it is for? – There is an old saying that goes something like “if water ever was discovered, you can be sure it was not by a fish”. This means that we humans are probably the last to understand what consciousness really is. Nevertheless…

Hypothesis

Consciousness is the awareness about an environment with the goal to act through decisions.

The reason that consciousness is developed by evolution is because it provides advantages to living beings. The advantage the being have is to transcend physical determinism and decide and act outside of immediate physical forces, e. g. with the future or some vision in mind.

If this is true, then consciousness and its positive effect can be measured in two ways: (1) by measuring the awareness of living system (a human or a wiki) about its environment and (2) by looking at its ability to decide and act on these consciousness data.

Note that what we are distinguishing here is the “livingness” of a system. We are not tackling the “hard problems” of Consciousness, known by names such as “qualia,” “purely subjective experience,” “experience,” “awareness,” or “Consciousness.” Rather, we are refering to simple more or less objective properties of things that people tend to agree are conscious.

Wiki and awareness

If people enter a wiki community, identifying and aligning their interest with the community goals, then it become immediately visible that the awareness is increased. Observations, thoughts, experiences are brought together in a place. This enlarges the horizon and speeds learning of those that are part of the process.

Wiki and decisions

Up to now wiki communities have not made great progress in acting or decision making in real space.

Discussion

This thing you are calling Consciousness is obvious. We know what it is, we know what it’s for, it’s clear that it’s evolutionary.

Just for the record, it’s not what several of us call “consciousness.”

And if you want to say, “Look! Huzzah! We have explained Consciousness, formerly the most deep mystery of all time! You can believe that science explains all things! Attack those, infidels, who believe that there’s something unexplained about Consciousness!”

…I have to say: Congradulations. You’ve constructed a Straw Man, and explained it twig for twig.

My laptop is conscious by your story. Sure, feel free to extend the definition until it meets the intelligence and limits of a mechanical plant or rabbit or human or cyborg or super-intelligence. Substrate is completely unimportant to me: Skin, Neuron, Wire, Ribbon, Dirt, Lead Pipe, Flow of Water, Magnetic Field, Optic Cabling, Silicon, what-have-you. Substrate is superfluous to the evolutionary process. Nest your spheres of mechanical creativity however you like; It’s all irrelevant to me.

Because the thing is: In the end, you haven’t explained what is consciousness to me.

Because the thing that I am calling consciousness, is utterly superfluous to all those things. The system can operate just as well without it, as with it.

Now, I know your next argument. I know what you’re going to say. I’ve been down this road before, countless cycles.

This is the part where you say: “But Lion, if you can’t define it, what’s it good for? What’s this dangler idea of yours about? How can I even attempt to communicate with you?”

And I’ll say this:

  • Listen. There is something that it is to experience, all by itself.
  • Some people hear these words, and understand what it means. It’s our private thing to understand what we’re talking about.
  • Only we who know what this thing is that we are referring to; Only we who know it, and know of our knowing it, (known especially after talking with those who don’t know what it is, and mistake our descriptions for other things, as has happened here,) are qualified to talk about it, and to think about it, and to reason about it. Everyone who does not understand it, who cannot see it, who continuously mistake it for other things, your people are not qualified to speak about it. Because it does not exist to you.
  • And listen more carefully still: You can’t awaken someone who’s pretending to be asleep.

Now, this will necessarily seem “mystical” to you, an outsider, who cannot see it, or who refuse to see it so strongly, that you cannot see it, distinguish it, differentiate it, and so on.

You will, necessarily, concoct stories and explanations about what us, we, the insiders who persist “the heresy of consciousness,” are thinking. You will make up stories about our delusions and insanity and religiousness and adherence to tradition or what not. “Ah, yes, Process #5F9CA546, the sad story of a reason ran amuk, member of the Consciousness sect of the Special Difference. Poor story, his; We had to place his process into indefinite archival.”

But, I’ll bear a special witness to my witness:

There is indeed, something that we recognize and all Conciousness. It is distinctly different than, though clearly (to us) connected with, what you call “Consciousness.” Connected, but not the same. Something that demands, but does not to our satisfaction, receive explanation. That is, there is an explanatory gap, between your story, and our fact. That is, there is a fact that demands explanation, that your story does not bridge. It explains half of the story very well, and to our complete expectations. But there is a half that it does not explain.

This half, you cannot perceive, at least the side of you that has access to your voice. Being incapable of perceiving it, you cannot note it’s absence in your story.

Don’t let us bother you. Please, continue to process your mind worlds. Allow the stars to explode, and the planets to form, and the animals to evolve. Allow the humans to grow and inhabit and become super-computers. Allow the great processing to develop on and on and on.

We will not stop you. We will not create unnecessary wars for you. We will not seek to convert those who have no light and sound in them.

Here is what we intend:

We will look across your young, and seek out those who show a sign. We will search your languages for the concepts of experience and consciousness and so on, amongst your brood. Amongst those who talk about it, we will seek those who talk about a “something else.” Or the discord and discontinuance of: “But wait, that’s not what I’m talking about. I am talking about something else.”

We will find them, and we request the access rights to deliver them a message, and the right to further communication with these entities.

This is mainly what we ask. You may shun and negatively mark us and so forth; Please, do not strike us down for our heresy.

We promise: We will not try to find anybody else. We will not try to make people think the way we do. We may speculate (for ethical purposes, you see,) that, underneath, folded within the bitflows that make up your intelligence, there is actually what we call Consciousness. But don’t worry: We won’t try to somehow “stir” it.

After so many rounds of conversation in the Old Years, we even doubt that it is possible. So don’t worry this: Just allow us access to those who intrinsicly see it.

Lion, it seems that I pushed some button in your machine. Labeled “20 sec until explosion”. And now, in our Hollywood blockbuster we have to frantically decide which one, which wire to cut through, the red one or the blue, for to live or die. Puuh, … it’s only good that we are used that these stories always have a happy ending.

Now, seriously, first of all, I can hardly image what you are talking about. Have you lead so many discussions about consciousness? So many frustrations and dead ends? So that you do not even listen to what I really say?

My point is not a scientific explanation of consciousness to deprive it from its magic. Quite the contrary. I think that “the point” of life is that it is a process beyond physical determinism. If science and physics where the end, then no life need ever exist.

The work of ChristopherAlexander - which is revolutionary beyond Descartes - targets exactly this problem. It’s a counter-science. Instead of looking at everything “as if it where a machine” (Descartes) it means to look at everything “as a living system” (Alexander). Alexander’s theory is a new theory of life rivalling science in its consequences.

But this doesn’t mean that there are no functional relationsships. Consciousness has a function. I defined consciousness by defining the function. Perhaps not a real definition, you could see it as a trick. (What is an apple? … something that feeds your body? … does this tell us something substancial about an apple?) Although I think there is more to the definition above because there are not so many alternatives that fill the same function.

To the point: a computer doesn’t make decisions. It is predictible.

Humans are not predictible, they are free, to a certain extent. This is still unexplained. And probably unexplainable by normal science because this science is specialized on understanding machine-like systems. How should a machine-explaining system explain a machine that is not acting machine-like?

But maybe I totally misunderstand the source of your emotions. Perhaps I’ve unintentionally offended your mother or your patriotic feelings. For which I’d appologize, of course.

BTW http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness defines consciousness quite differently. They not even mention the words “decision”, “physics” or “determinism”.

Perhaps you would have understood me, if I had put it as: “consciousness is the freedom-generator of living beings”. I avoided the term freedom, because its badly defined.

At the EvolutionarySalon, we’ve talked about 3 periods of human thought about the universe:

  • “Mother” / “Father” – there is a God, envisioned as mother or father, (or something like that,) that causes everything to happen
  • “the clock” – there is a gigantic clockwork, designed, the logic of which causes everything to happen
  • “nested spheres of creativity” – the world works creatively from the level of sub-atomic particles, to atoms, to molecules, to (you know) biological happenings, to whole animals and plants and environments and people, and so on, and so forth.

The last is not to say that there is a repeat of “the Great Chain of Being.” Rather, just to look at different sizes / distances / “spheres” of activity, and to see what is happening somewhere at that location, and to look at the activity happening in that “sphere.” (Not really a sphere.)

There is not design at work there; Rather, there is evolution, exploration of patterns, whatever.

One insight typical of thinking like this, is to see that it’s not just a “device,” but a device in a context, and that the context is as meaningful to understanding the device, as an understanding of the device itself. Other people wax poetic about “wholes and parts.”

So, I understand this idea, and I follow it, and I agree with it, and I understand a number of good effects of this idea, and so on. I like this idea and follow it.

(I want to make sure we’re on the same page here, before going further on. I also think this idea is worthy its own page.)

However, I do not believe that it dispells the validity of simulation arguments, or argument from simulation. I believe we can imagine a computer the size of 3,000 of our universes, and load everything into it, and run it one instruction at a time, in its own time, and start asking interesting questions about when is there a Conciousness, what is Consciousness, and do so in a completely and utterly deterministic framework, devoid of any actual choice.

I think that determinism is a trap. The world is basically non-deterministic, only a small fraction of it works like clock.

The argument “I can imagine a computer” is not discussable, because we can imagine everything, like Hollywood. I can imagine green people from Mars.

Do you mean:

  • “The universe, in how it actually is, actually has things that are purely random and non-deterministic,”
  • or that: “The universe is deterministic, and so incredibly and vastly complicated, that there are what appear to be non-deterministic results?”

Now, I recognize that the above two are only imaginations about what you might think, like in Hollywood, and like the green people from Mars, and therefore, this line of inquiry cannot be discussable. But please humor me for a moment, and help me figure out what’s going on here.

In the first line, we’ve got a car engine that suddenly (non-deterministically) starts breaking. There are no actual deterministic reasons: Cars just spuriously break, frequently for no reason at all.

In the second line, we’ve got a car engine that operates along the lines of the laws of physics as we understand them, and at all spheres of “nested creativity.” So, if it’s acting funny, it could be (determinstically) because: (A) A spy from outside the system rigged our car to break. (B) It hasn’t been oiled in a long time. (C) a small kid threw a rock, and knocked a wire out of place. (D) the battery died. (E) a colony of ants that decided to take residence in the engine bit a hole through an important pipe. (F) the gasoline was bad at the station, and, over time, damaged the fuel tank.

(and so on)

In the first line, we have brains that are magical, and conjure up words out of nothing.

In the second line, we have vastly complicated arrays of neurons and sense organs and issues, that all behave determinstically, but taken together, it’s basically unpredictable. You could predict it if you could build a computer simu- OH! But we can’t have that line of argument, because that involves using our imagination!

We’ll have to wait, until we have actual computer simulations of entire brains, before we can continue the discussion on that track.

Lion, a car is a machine. Machines are built as deterministic devices. If they break, we can always find a reason (for example some part is broken) although maybe the reason that this part is broken is outside of our reasoning. It may well be that some bump in the street coincided with some QP state of the material structure and made the part break. We’ll never know. It is a fact that we can not predict the life-time of single parts. We can make statistics.

What I mean by “the universe basically non-deterministic” is that its parts, elementary particles, atoms, molecules are non-deterministic. They are highly activated oscillating phenoma whose state can typically neither be measured (Heisenberg) nor simulated, with the exception of some very special simple cases.

This means for example that a simple falling stone, a very deterministic system, is not really simple. In fact, each of the maybe 10^26 atoms and 10^28 elementary particles has its own complicated and dynamic energy sink, in which it is oscillating beyond observation. Graviation now makes these sinks slightly assymetrical. So while oscillating billions of times at unimaginable speed the average positions of these particles also move slightly and slowly in the direction of the gravitational force and through statistics a predictible movement of the overall stone is the result. So in a way causality could be seen as the surface of an ocean-world of non-determinism. We can predict the tide but not a single “wave” or the way of a “elementary fish”.

What we have learned over time is to ignore the non-determinic parts of the universe and only focus on cause-effect relationships. Our eyes are not constructed to see the oscillations, the atoms and the void, because it wouldn’t help. The same is with our thinking. We are so concentrated on causal effects that we are not used to describe anything else.

We have learned to deal with randomness, but this is a rather new concept (iirc 18th century). In history gods or spirits were the causes of random effects. In the early 20th century Einstein still fought against randomness in physics but was defeated.

But we do not yet have concepts for the zone between causality and randomness. Concepts to explain our consciousness and freeness outside of causality and randomness. Although we know it and experience it. I think it must be ridiculously simple but we do not see it because it’s on our blind spot.

Of course there are different ways to react to this situation: (1) what we know is everything we need to know (basically Hegel and Wikipedia) (2) don’t try to talk about the untalkable (Zen) or (3) seek innovative ways although this is difficult, risky and probably unrewarding (Columbus).

Even if the universe has fundamental randomness, I think the universe still follows rules. For example, if there were a random number generator, and if it were instructed to generate a number from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, then we still know something, and the world is still following rules.

It is not clear, though, that there is fundamental randomness. It’s entirely plausible that there is subtlety that we simply can’t observe. Perhaps if you have two protons, they are not really, actually, entirely alike.

Regardless of all that, we still do not have an explanation for consciousness.

Rather, we may be talking about “free will,” which may (or may not) have something to do with consciousness.

Elsewhere on this wiki, I have listed some attributes of how I define consciousness. Something like:

  • It is singular. It is inconceivable that it could be experienced in double: The sounds and experiences of mental phenomenon could be experienced in a psychadelic double or triple or multiple (what have you,) but consciousness is necessarily and entirely singulary.
  • It can diminish and grow. When we fall asleep, it seems to slip away.
  • It seems to be completely tied to the activity within a single person’s brain, though we don’t really have a way of knowing if it’s ever otherwise.
  • It is intensely personal. It cannot be shared or shown, even if you had nanites analyzing and studying everything that happened within the brain. (This is not true for the subjective notion of “I,” which can probably be tracked down to particular patterns of exchange within the brain, nor is it true for the subjective marks of thinking, nor is it true for the subjective marks of emotion. All of those things, all measurable things, can be accounted for by hypothetical nanites (or other Gods-eye-views) in the brain.)
  • It is not measurable. (Another way of saying the last.)
  • And yet, we talk about it, somehow.

As for Zen, (not talking about what can’t be talked about,) that’s clearly out: Because a subset of the human population knows exactly what I’m talking about, when I talk about Consciousness. And they express the same difficulty I have, when arguing with people who insist that it’s not there, or that we are just imagining fairies and ghosts and angels.

I have talked with plenty of people who understand what Consciousness is, and thus this isn’t talking about what can’t be talked about.

I don’t know about consciousness, but I don’t think it’s certain that the universe is non-deterministic. Sure, it can’t be determined by us, but we don’t need Quantum Mechanics for that. If we were living in a “Game of Life” universe (That’s fully detemrinistic), we’d probably be unable to make 100% accurate measurements too. But I don’t think it’s proven that QM don’t have an underlying deterministic layer.

Which brings us to an interesting question: what if the many-worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct? What if every subatomic “choice” made in the universe results in it being split in a set of parallel universes, one for each possible oucome? Such a “meta-universe” would be deterministic as a whole (i.e. knowing the inintial conditions, you could figure out which (outrageously huge) set of universe you’d optain after a given time). In such a situation - what about consciousness? Wouldn’t every consciousness also be splitting up at every instance? Would that clash with how Lion described consciousness earlier?

Which principle would it violate? Clearly not “singular,” because we do not experience countless zillion bifurcations of ourselves. “You” only take a single path, though copies of you may be made over and over and over again.

These questions of free will or determinism are just side-show distractions from the question of Consciousness, which can be considered wholy and entirely seperately.

OK, I was just curious, I see it that way too (the “doesn’t contradict singular” bit).

I was mainly rebounding on Helmut’s remark about determinism, I don’t think it has that much to do with consciousness.

Lion, now you are at the point. Of course we and experts know a lot about consciousness from a practical point of view. But most of the interesting questions remain unanswered.

Emile, of course it is proven that QM is non-determininistic. Anything else about multiple universes is Hollywood. Of course no expert can force you to believe one or the other.

I apologize for my over-reaction.

It’s because I’ve talked with a lot of people about this. And the notion that there are unanswered questions, especially interesting unanswered questions, is unthinkable to them.

Many of them view science (“How does nature work?”) as a hero that has triumphantly dispelled the goblins of superstition and religion. They view talk of an unexplained mystery as God-of-the-gaps reasoning.

I think it is more that this question cannot be answered empirically, even at a theoretical level. DavidChalmers has done a lot of work to show that this is the case. Many scientists find this idea disturbing, and assume that it is false, prima facie.

Is it still worth thinking about and talking about? I think so.

But what do you do with the person who says: “Because you cannot define it to my satisfaction, it does not exist.” ..?

Hence the peace offering.

I think that Emile is suggesting that QM is:

  • plausibly deterministic, within it’s world – if we could see what was actually going on down there
  • but indeterministic to our vision

That is:

  • fixed rules, no randomness
  • but we are not able to tease it out, due to mechanical problems

Not just mechanical problems, but theoretical mechanical problems: That there are no theoretical tools that could tease out what’s going on beyond point X.

So that would be a determinstic universe, that appears to be indeterministic.

Multi-worlds hypothesis may be Hollywood, but it is not necessarily rediculous or implausible. It could be true, we just have no way of knowing or testing whether it’s true or not, unless the multiple worlds somehow have a way of interacting with one another.

Lion, I think that “definition people” can easily be fought by letting them define a “simple” word like “love” and then offering counter-examples to show that they are unable to give a useful definition which must seem ridiculous to themselves.

This page started because of the question “What place does wiki have in the evolution of consciousness and cognition” by JJLevy on WhatIsWiki. Such a question fully depends on what you “want” consciousness to mean. Without making this clear at the start anyone can back out anytime by “well that’s nice but this is not really consciousness for me”. So what I did was to suggest a concise functional definition which would - if accepted - allow to evaluate the effect of wiki on consciousness in a very down-to-the-earth way. If it is not accepted, then someone has to come up with something better.

Basically this is Popper’s method of avoiding language definiton discussions. Instead of seeking a “true definition” which can’t exist for various reasons, one treats words as tools (that you can build for the purpose) and tries to reach an agreement for the discussion and problem at hand.

I admit that I was surprised at how the discussion switched from discussion of the impact of wiki on the “evolution of consciousness” to a discussion of human consciousness/awareness, which to me are still somewhat different topics.

I like Popper’s method, then :) I tend not to trust words much, and believe that a lot of our disagreements boil down to conflicts over the use of words. Different communication protocol standards, if you want. Is “Empiricism versus Rationalism” conceptually the same as “Big-endian versus Little-endian” Maybe :)

So, I guess this boils down to: what do we want consciousness to be about on this wiki? The experience of human awareness? Or a deeper awareness of each other’s situation (not sure about that definition). Should this page be a disambiguation page? :)

Ah, shoot.

Helmut, you’re absolutely right.

I should have read WhatIsWiki before jumping right in.

This is just purely semantics.

Just a small request: A note saying that by consciousness, we’re not talking about Consciousness as in “Awareness,” rather, we’re talking loosely about things that we trust to be living systems.

There, I’ve added one.

And I removed your name, Helmut, if you don’t mind. But if you do want your name in there, by all means: Please put it back.

Lion, that’s the tricky thing: if you say “consciousness … loosely about living systems” then you exclude a robot or maybe even a wiki from being attributed with consciousness. I remember early discussions in 2001 whether something like an “online community” can exist, on the argument that “community” was seen as tied to people directly interacting in real life.

Back to “consciousness” I’d describe it as a vague phenomenen that can be observed in different quality in living organisms:

  • subsystems giving information about internal states (hunger, pain, … [feelings])
  • a decison making instance (acting, a priori “motivation to live”)
  • subsystems giving information about the environment (senses)
  • a unifying system (awareness, “self”, the “individuum”)
  • acting on past experiences assuming similarity (memory, learning)
  • pattern analysis of experience (“signals”, a priori “causality”)
  • coordination of internal movements (coordination, a priori “time”)
  • representation and simulation of external movements (simulation, a priori “space”)
  • symbolic representations internally (symbols)
  • use of symbols externally (simple messages, words, meaning)
  • use of symbol patterns externally (language, communication)
  • use of symbol patterns internally (thinking)
  • systematic symbolic models of environment (theories, religion, science)

Contrary to the page MindBodyProblem, I’d describe the mind-body problem as the question whether this is a system that can be understood as a purely physical, mechanical, deterministic system (in that case a reasonable developed robot should become “alife”) or whether there is a detached system (mind, soul) that’s needed for its functioning. On the other hand, looking “downward” in evolution, the question “what separates us from (other) animals?” is interesting because it touches our self-understanding and our “human status”.

BTW Christopher Alexander views all systems (biological or not) as living systems and describes the world as an unfolding process of life. In this view there is no separation, just different quality and density of centers that interact and help each other to form living systems. While this interpretation gives new and desirable results in a “mechanical determistic” dominated world, I’m not sure whether I like the outlook in this context. Anyway hs “pattern method” seems to allevate the fundamental ability of “pattern awareness” to higher level.

Back to wikis I think that we find many elements of the list above in wikis. For example we have a kind unifying communication and an outside view that is constructed by the filtered information that contributors pass into the wiki. We have the a priori motivation for the wiki to live and continue. We build symbols (pagenames, pattern language) for internal and external use. We build theories about the world. I think what wikis exhibit is a down-to-the-earth new kind of consciousness that will develop over the years to change the way the world is organized.

Perhaps the following paper about computer aided awareness is valuable in this discussion: http://www.webcollab.com/alee/papers/intro-ijhcs02.pdf

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