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How did consciousness evolve?

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Interbane

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Re: How did consciousness evolve?

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You've assumed without evidence there is no purpose (as homo sapiens understand purpose to be) to Nature.
Yours is the best explanation you can come up with for all this purposeless undesigned splendor.
I have assumed without evidence. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. There is a place in everyone's worldview for assumptions. No worldview lacks them.

If we look at all the evidence, there's no need to appeal to an intelligence. Not to say there can't be a higher intelligence. But there's simply no need to accept that assumption. In fact, there's a reason we should be wary of that assumption.

People all too often believe there is agency behind things where the real cause is a non-agent. We're wired to see agency, because there's too much risk to not make that assumption. So, we have to be wary of the assumption. Are you?
Consciousness is only a sophisticated response to stimuli.
You agree with that, right?
I don't, that's too reductionist. An entire universe is contained in that word "sophisticated".
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: How did consciousness evolve?

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DB Roy wrote:The biggest problem of consciousness is consciousness. We say that consciousness is awareness but it is really experience. We are conscious because we experience the world around us. Everything we observe is an experience. The problem is that we can't explain why we should experience anything nor can we explain our experiences. What we take as hard, objective data is really a subjective experience that no one can explain. Where does consciousness come from? All these dry theories that try to explain it have to be understood through consciousness which is a subjective experience that no one can explain because we're trying to reduce consciousness to data which cannot be done. Consciousness is ultimately a quale. Subjective experience (qualia) is not data. Data can be understood through subjective experience but not the other way around. . . ..
Thanks for your thoughtful post, DB. I think I follow you here, but would perhaps say it a little differently.

Buddhists say that our sense of self is an illusion and this is probably more or less in line with what neurologists say too. For clarity's sake, I tend to think of self and consciousness as the same thing and use the terms interchangeably. Maybe incorrectly.

But though self may be an illusion, it still provides subjective meaning in our lives. Indeed, it's everything. So, even if we can accept that self is an illusion and that there is no divine agency in the universe, we are still guided by our emotions and, thus, we experience pleasure and pain. It's all subjective, yet meaningful.

Which is why Ant's Reductio ad absurdum is nonsense. Regardless of whether we believe there is divine agency, we all experience pain and pleasure. The love I feel for my wife and children is profoundly meaningful to me. My sense of loss when my mother suffered a stroke was profoundly painful to me. But you who are reading this cannot feel my sense of profound joy and profound loss except in empathy—in relation to your own loved ones.

Even Buddhists who meditate on the concept of no-self still experience pain and pleasure. A Buddhist meditative life only strives to reduce pain (and pleasure), not to eliminate it altogether.

So back to DB's point, though we may be able to scientifically explain consciousness (to some extent), we can never adequately explain our very subjective experiences in the same kind of way. This is the domain of poetry, is it not? But even the language of poetry will always fall far short. Feelings cannot be expressed in a mathematical formula. It's actually preposterous to think we could.

Charles Dickens satirizes the idea of reducing subjective feelings to formula in his book, Hard Times. The very essence of a horse is something we see, feel, smell, we experience on many levels. But Mr. Gradgrind here wants to eliminate all that subjective stuff . . .
“Bitzer,” said Thomas Gradgrind, “your definition of a horse.”
“Quadruped. Gramnivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve
incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod
with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.” Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
“Now girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “you know what a horse is.”

–Charles Dickens, Hard Times
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DB Roy
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Re: How did consciousness evolve?

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We can compile all kinds of scientific information on the color blue--light frequencies and such--but it doesn't explain why we experience the color blue or if what I see as blue is what you see.

As a thought experiment, suppose you and I see black and white in opposite. Whenever I see something white, you see it as black and whenever I see something black, you see it as white. Now, let's say that I look at something white and call it "white." You see it as black but agree to call it white. Then when I look something black and call it "black" you see it as white but agree to call it black. Could we ever know that where I see white you see black and when I see black you see white? No. If I see a white sheet, you see it as black but call it white and so I would have no reason to suspect you see it as black. We think we see the same thing but we don't. Qualia are that way. I can never be sure others perceive what I perceive even when it appears obvious.

So there is a disconnect between experience and data. They seem linked but they are not. But the bigger question is why do either of us see black or white at all? How does this work?
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Re: How did consciousness evolve?

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This is one of my favorite articles in the SEP. It deals with the subject you're talking about. Read it all and let me know your thoughts.

If you don't have time, just read section 2. The Basic Idea. It deals with the Mary's Room thought experiment.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/
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Re: How did consciousness evolve?

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As a thought experiment, suppose you and I see black and white in opposite. Whenever I see something white, you see it as black and whenever I see something black, you see it as white. Now, let's say that I look at something white and call it "white." You see it as black but agree to call it white. Then when I look something black and call it "black" you see it as white but agree to call it black. Could we ever know that where I see white you see black and when I see black you see white? No.
Let's see if photography might resolve this. In normal vision if you see a black cat in a coal bin and want to take a picture, the camera attempts to make it appear as middle grey. So if you want to make the picture appear dark, you need to reduce exposure, over-riding the camera's auto-exposure tendency.

But in reverse bizarro world where you see the cat in a coal bin like a white dove in snow, you'll increase the exposure to make it appear lighter than middle grey. The photo will become whiter, which you will actually perceive as darker. You'll take another picture increasing the exposure more, which will make it even whiter, again appearing darker in bizarro world. You'll rarely get a photo exposure you like in reverse bizarro world.

Hmmmmmm...... Maybe..... :hmm:
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Re: How did consciousness evolve?

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LanDroid wrote: But in reverse bizarro world where you see the cat in a coal bin like a white dove in snow, you'll increase the exposure to make it appear lighter than middle grey. The photo will become whiter, which you will actually perceive as darker. You'll take another picture increasing the exposure more, which will make it even whiter, again appearing darker in bizarro world. You'll rarely get a photo exposure you like in reverse bizarro world.

Hmmmmmm...... Maybe..... :hmm:
In photography, white people photograph well against stark white backgrounds because white people aren't really white so they'll stand out nicely against the white without too much contrast. Black people, however, should be photographed against a stark black background. It seems counter-intuitive but since black people aren't really black, they stand out against the black background without too much contrast whereas against a stark white background it is hard to see their features.

So a white person shows up at a bizarro photographer's studio to get his picture taken. The photographer sees him as a black person so he shoots him against a black background. To you, though, you see a white person against a stark white background. A black person goes to him and he sees a white person and so shoots him against a white background but you'll see a black person against a black background so it works out.

The point is, of course, qualia are always personal and can never be shared or adequately described. We cannot even be certain that we experience quales the same way. They are so personal that it may well be that no two people experience them the same way. But, even more importantly, why do we feel them at all? I bang my shin, I feel pain. But why? Why not something else? Why anything at all?
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Re: How did consciousness evolve?

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Interbane wrote:This is one of my favorite articles in the SEP. It deals with the subject you're talking about. Read it all and let me know your thoughts.

If you don't have time, just read section 2. The Basic Idea. It deals with the Mary's Room thought experiment.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/
I get where they are coming from. Suppose a person was kept in a colorless room all their life but were given data about the color blue--reams of data which they read and understand completely to a very technical degree. The you turn on a blue spotlight and cast it on the wall and ask them what color that is. What answer will this person give? "Oh, that's the color blue I've been reading about because it matches the data." No. They would have no idea what color that is. The data would not help him predict it. He must experience it.

Oddly, if you study consciousness, measure and classify every bit of it, your study is still incomplete because consciousness itself is excluded just as the color blue is excluded from the study of blue. Your own consciousness gets int the way of the study so you would need to have an outside observer observing your consciousness. it can't be another person or you just end up in the same predicament as before. Some say God but, as commonly understood, God won't work. So consciousness IS already the outside observer--outside the universe. So where does it reside?
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The way I understand it is that propositional knowledge - knowledge that can be conveyed - is like a programming language. It's versatile, able to reference anything and everything. But the experiential part of our brain operates from a programming language as well. But, it's a different language. Two different types of information. The operating system of our mind is such that these languages can't cross over. The best we can do is translate, rather than transfer.
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Re: How did consciousness evolve?

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Interbane wrote:The way I understand it is that propositional knowledge - knowledge that can be conveyed - is like a programming language. It's versatile, able to reference anything and everything. But the experiential part of our brain operates from a programming language as well. But, it's a different language. Two different types of information. The operating system of our mind is such that these languages can't cross over. The best we can do is translate, rather than transfer.
I read the SEP article and would have to spend more time studying it before I could respond on some of these technical issues. But it seems to me that Mary would have to be taught that the word "red" describes the red square she is seeing for the first time. But there's a whole realm of experience that she's missing. Many of us who have known the color red since we were infants and don't have to think about what color it is. That knowledge is deeply ingrained in our brains along with emotions that we associate with the color.

The word "red" by itself only conveys a small amount of information about the color. Mary will have to memorize the words that associate with each color, but until she gets out in the world and sees things that are actually red, she will have very much a sterile kind of experiences with colors.

Therefore, I would agree with Dennet's description of qualia as "as "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us".

Dennett goes on to say that perhaps "Mary's failure to learn exactly what seeing red feels like is simply a failure of language, or a failure of our ability to describe experiences. An alien race with a different method of communication or description might be perfectly able to teach their version of Mary exactly how seeing the color red would feel. Perhaps it is simply a uniquely human failing to communicate first-person experiences from a third-person perspective."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Color is a good example of qualia, but it seems to me that some of these issues are even more evident with music. My wife can't fathom why I like some of the music I listen to. And likewise I can't stand most of the music on the radio these days (unless it's an oldie station). You simply cannot explain to anyone why Miles Davis sounds good. It just does. And if someone has never listened to jazz before will probably not enjoy it. Until we're familiar with the patterns of jazz and can start to anticipate and recognize those patterns, it will sound all of a jumble and nonsensical.

Also, some people who didn't grow up with music will never feel a close bond with it. Those of us who were exposed to a lot of music growing up have a very emotional connection to it. Since Mary is getting such a late start experiencing color, I don't think she will ever develop much of a relationship with color.
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Re: How did consciousness evolve?

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http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3ufkw6

This tutorial will be of invaluable help in seeing how consciousness works in the world. Pay particular attention to the closing monologue which encapsulates the whole thing quite nicely.
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