Consciousness

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I'd say there are levels of consciousness. Plants and trees aren't self conscious like we are. But they do react to outside forces and they do know how to do things. They know where water is, were the sun is, some expel stuff to keep pest away, some trees share water with other near by trees, there's a lot of stuff that I'm convinced shows a low level of consciousness.

My leg 'knows' to jerk when my patellar tendon is tapped; plants can find water, follow the sun, poison pests, and so-on, but this isn't 'knowledge' in the commonly accepted sense.

Often these debates come down to the definition of words and their useful scope. If you widen the scope of 'knowledge' far enough, you can say the Grand Canyon 'knows' how water erodes rock. Does this mean it's conscious?

 

[dlamberth]

Many indigenous cultures are animist; they believe that plants have associated spirits to which they may attribute conscious agency. There is no evidence for this and there is a body of research that suggests that humans have a strong tendency to attribute sentient agency to even inanimate objects. It's a result of our 'hyperactive agency detection device' (HADD), a gift of evolution in more dangerous times.

Your point of evidence is well taken. But it makes me wonder what evidence is acceptable. Because for the Indigenous cultures, they do work with the spiritual aspects of pants as a conscious entity. And the result they get is all the evidence they need.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Your point of evidence is well taken. But it makes me wonder what evidence is acceptable. Because for the Indigenous cultures, they do work with the spiritual aspects of pants as a conscious entity. And the result they get is all the evidence they need.

They 'work' with what they believe to be true. Believing it doesn't make it real. If you believe your car has a sentient spirit, then you'll interpret everything it does in those terms, and if it doesn't start you may believe the spirit is angry or absent, etc; but that doesn't mean it has a sentient spirit.

 

[dlamberth]

They 'work' with what they believe to be true. Believing it doesn't make it real. If you believe your car has a sentient spirit, then you'll interpret everything it does in those terms, and if it doesn't start you may believe the spirit is angry or absent, etc; but that doesn't mean it has a sentient spirit.

Changing direction slightly, but I think still related, Sufies talk about seeing the Soul of beings. Would you place that into the same world as what you described above?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Changing direction slightly, but I think still related, Sufies talk about seeing the Soul of beings. Would you place that into the same world as what you described above?

I don't know what they mean by 'soul'.

 

[durangodawood]

Changing direction slightly, but I think still related, Sufies talk about seeing the Soul of beings. Would you place that into the same world as what you described above?

When I do that its terribly hard to determine how much I'm seeing vs how much I'm projecting onto animals, plants, places, etc..

 

[dlamberth]

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[Willis Gravning]

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You may find this kind of interesting.

I withhold judgment on the results though.

 

[dlamberth]

I admit to being heavily influenced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who saw Consciousness as an evolutionary process starting with the Big Bang and progressing first through matter than plants than in animals and on to Human Beings. Teilhard understood Creation to be a evolutionary process towards union with the Godhead.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

You may find this kind of interesting.

I withhold judgment on the results though.

Yes - this turns out to be a cherry-picked section of the whole programme; their conclusions were that, "Although they had interesting results with the first couple of experiments, they felt that it was probably interference from vibration, electromagnetics, or themselves that skewed the instruments. Once they were able to remove these variables from the setup, they weren't able to get the same results." See Annotated Mythbusters, Episode 61.

This is consistent with other experiments into such phenomena - the better-controlled the methodology, the smaller and fewer the anomalies found.

 

[Willis Gravning]

Yes - this turns out to be a cherry-picked section of the whole programme; their conclusions were that, "Although they had interesting results with the first couple of experiments, they felt that it was probably interference from vibration, electromagnetics, or themselves that skewed the instruments. Once they were able to remove these variables from the setup, they weren't able to get the same results." See Annotated Mythbusters, Episode 61.

This is consistent with other experiments into such phenomena - the better-controlled the methodology, the smaller and fewer the anomalies found.

If I am understanding it correctly the link seems to show they got a 35% response rate inside the shipping container and 28% outside.
They also ran the same experiment with an EEG machine which got no response.

The last is not too surprising since an EEG and a polygraph are quite different. An EEG measures changes in electrical potentials while the polygraph measures changes in conductivity.

Here is a link to a more recent imaging done with a systemic response of a plant being bitten into by a caterpillar.

Blazes Of Light Show Plant's Response To Being Eaten

Of course none of this can be taken as evidence of consciousness.

Edited to add: I read the rest of the link and see they got no response with the plant more isolated and the myth was considered busted.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Here is a link to a more recent imaging done with a systemic response of a plant being bitten into by a caterpillar.

Blazes Of Light Show Plant's Response To Being Eaten

Of course none of this can be taken as evidence of consciousness.

Yes, there's no doubt that plants respond to physical attack in various ways, including the release of chemicals that trigger other members of the species to take defensive measures. But the majority of these are fairly simple stimulus-response.

Without a means of sophisticated and integrated information processing such as a brain, they are not capable of what we generally understand as consciousness (which, unfortunately, isn't well defined).

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I admit to being heavily influenced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who saw Consciousness as an evolutionary process starting with the Big Bang and progressing first through matter than plants than in animals and on to Human Beings. Teilhard understood Creation to be a evolutionary process towards union with the Godhead.

Biological evolutionary processes are undirected, they have no future goal.

 

[dlamberth]

Biological evolutionary processes are undirected, they have no future goal.

The way Teilhard saw it is that there was a pull towards greater consciousness. So it isn't a goal actually. But that over time a greater consciousness will evolve.

 

[jayem]

Biological evolutionary processes are undirected, they have no future goal.

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Natural selection does have a "goal" of sorts. It's to ensure a species can reproduce within its environment. As long as a species can proliferate adequately, there is little or no pressure for it to evolve. But if a significant environmental change occurs--like the introduction of a predator, or a disease, or climatic change that impedes the population's reproductive capacity--then natural selection will favor individuals possessing traits allowing them reproduce despite
a changed habitat. And over time, the population will consist largely of individuals possessing these traits. The species will have evolved. But if there's not enough variability in the species, and the change in habitat is long-term, then it may go extinct. So in this sense, environment is what directs evolution. Or at least, environment directs natural selection.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The way Teilhard saw it is that there was a pull towards greater consciousness. So it isn't a goal actually.

Perhaps it's the phrasing - a 'pull' implies a directing (teleological?) influence from ahead, which only makes sense in terms of a goal. Even a 'push' has teleological overtones.

But that over time a greater consciousness will evolve.

That's reasonable (though arguable) as a probabilistic statement, but not as an absolute.

It's a question of the particular context and relative advantage. For example, at the beginnings of evolution, when the first replicators had appeared, they were the simplest arrangements that could reproduce themselves with some random variation. Any variants that were simpler just couldn't reproduce. In this situation there are only two options for continuing to reproduce - stay as simple as possible or become more complex. Random variants that were more complex and could still reproduce would continue on. So in this situation it's almost inevitable that complexity will increase, even though the variation is entirely random.

At some point, complexity alone will become a disadvantage, e.g. slowing down reproduction, requiring more resources, and being more fragile and unreliable. At this point complexity will only increase if it provides some advantage that outweighs the disadvantages, for example, being able to make use of (eat) the teeming numbers of simpler replicators; and so-on.

The long-term result tends towards a pyramid of increasing complexity with vast numbers of simple organisms, with decreasing numbers of organisms as the complexity increases.

But complexity will only increase if it provides some advantage for survival and reproduction. Many complex organisms have evolved to become simpler as their environment changed and their previous level of complexity was no longer an advantage.

So there's no guarantee that complexity will increase, there's no drive or 'pull' towards complexity. If more complexity is possible and it provides an advantage, then it may increase, but unless it provides an advantage it won't.

Consciousness is a feature of the most complex life on Earth, and humans appear to have the most sophisticated form of consciousness; but it won't 'increase' by evolutionary means unless there's some selective advantage - and it's not even entirely clear precisely what we mean by consciousness, and what advantage it provides (there are some ideas), never mind what 'increasing' it means, and whether or how that would be a selective advantage.

It's possible that we could use technology to enhance consciousness in some way - some people say we already do that with devices that provide information, memory extension, and unbiquitous communications; but that's using a very broad definition of 'consciousness'.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Natural selection does have a "goal" of sorts. It's to ensure a species can reproduce within its environment.

I disagree, unless you mean it in a poetic sense - and I don't think you do; natural selection means creatures die if they can't survive to reproduce in their environmental conditions. The environmental conditions and the creatures' fitness determine whether or not they'll survive to reproduce. You might just as well say that coastal erosion has the 'goal' of isolating large, hard rocks on the beach, because only rocks big and hard enough will survive the impact of the waves.

That's using what Daniel Dennett calls the 'intentional stance', a tendency to describe processes teleologically, a projection of our agent-centred viewpoint. He's OK with it as a descriptive convenience, e.g. birds evolved wings in order to fly, mammals evolved fur so that they could survive the cold; but it's a form of retrospective fallacy.

... in this sense, environment is what directs evolution. Or at least, environment directs natural selection.

I think there's a subtle equivocation (or a danger of it) of 'direct' there, between the active and passive meanings. It 'directs' only in the sense that the path of a river is 'directed' by gravity and terrain.

 

[Willis Gravning]

Perhaps it's the phrasing - a 'pull' implies a directing (teleological?) influence from ahead, which only makes sense in terms of a goal. Even a 'push' has teleological overtones.

That's reasonable (though arguable) as a probabilistic statement, but not as an absolute.

It's a question of the particular context and relative advantage. For example, at the beginnings of evolution, when the first replicators had appeared, they were the simplest arrangements that could reproduce themselves with some random variation. Any variants that were simpler just couldn't reproduce. In this situation there are only two options for continuing to reproduce - stay as simple as possible or become more complex. Random variants that were more complex and could still reproduce would continue on. So in this situation it's almost inevitable that complexity will increase, even though the variation is entirely random.

At some point, complexity alone will become a disadvantage, e.g. slowing down reproduction, requiring more resources, and being more fragile and unreliable. At this point complexity will only increase if it provides some advantage that outweighs the disadvantages, for example, being able to make use of (eat) the teeming numbers of simpler replicators; and so-on.

The long-term result tends towards a pyramid of increasing complexity with vast numbers of simple organisms, with decreasing numbers of organisms as the complexity increases.

But complexity will only increase if it provides some advantage for survival and reproduction. Many complex organisms have evolved to become simpler as their environment changed and their previous level of complexity was no longer an advantage.

So there's no guarantee that complexity will increase, there's no drive or 'pull' towards complexity. If more complexity is possible and it provides an advantage, then it may increase, but unless it provides an advantage it won't.

Consciousness is a feature of the most complex life on Earth, and humans appear to have the most sophisticated form of consciousness; but it won't 'increase' by evolutionary means unless there's some selective advantage - and it's not even entirely clear precisely what we mean by consciousness, and what advantage it provides (there are some ideas), never mind what 'increasing' it means, and whether or how that would be a selective advantage.

It's possible that we could use technology to enhance consciousness in some way - some people say we already do that with devices that provide information, memory extension, and unbiquitous communications; but that's using a very broad definition of 'consciousness'.

From what I have read there seems to be no clear consensus among scientists regarding the Hard Problem. Ideas range from consciousness (and volition) being completely an illusion to panpsychism in which every particle of the universe has at least some element of consciousness.

Being a theist and borderline pantheist, I tend to favor more toward that latter. I think our consciousness gives some kind of insight into the fundamental nature of the universe. But I admit I could be wrong.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

From what I have read there seems to be no clear consensus among scientists regarding the Hard Problem. Ideas range from consciousness (and volition) being completely an illusion to panpsychism in which every particle of the universe has at least some element of consciousness.

Being a theist and borderline pantheist, I tend to favor more toward that latter. I think our consciousness gives some kind of insight into the fundamental nature of the universe. But I admit I could be wrong.

I tend toward the idea that consciousness, like so much of our experience, not what it seems to be; in that sense it's an illusion - like a 3D movie generating the illusion of 3D movement, our brain generates the experience of a unified executive 'self', we feel we're the captain of the ship, when we're more like the ship's PR officer.

 

[jayem]

I disagree, unless you mean it in a poetic sense - and I don't think you do; natural selection means creatures die if they can't survive to reproduce in their environmental conditions. The environmental conditions and the creatures' fitness determine whether or not they'll survive to reproduce. You might just as well say that coastal erosion has the 'goal' of isolating large, hard rocks on the beach, because only rocks big and hard enough will survive the impact of the waves.

That's using what Daniel Dennett calls the 'intentional stance', a tendency to describe processes teleologically, a projection of our agent-centred viewpoint. He's OK with it as a descriptive convenience, e.g. birds evolved wings in order to fly, mammals evolved fur so that they could survive the cold; but it's a form of retrospective fallacy.

I think there's a subtle equivocation (or a danger of it) of 'direct' there, between the active and passive meanings. It 'directs' only in the sense that the path of a river is 'directed' by gravity and terrain.

I completely agree. I'm using the terms "goal" and "direct" in a purely figurative sense. Evolution is a totally natural process. It occurs when conditions are right, and no specific design should be imputed to the results. Similar to snowflakes forming when atmospheric water droplets fall through cold air. There is no intention to produce hexagonal crystalline structures.