When did “consciousness” enter the Universe?

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Of course I don't know. But one view is that consciousness is simply pure awareness. Somewhere in the evolution of things it becomes aware of thought and feeling. And even begins to identify with them. That is popular these days with Mindfulness Mediation. Awareness without identification.

What has that to do with souls? I'm trying to establish what you think they're supposed to be and do, i.e. why you think such a thing exists and is relevant.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Thought I'd try this out to see where it went.
I have some questions that I’m wondering how you all might answer.

The basic question I'm asking is "When did “consciousness” enter the Universe?"

Was it at the moment of the Big Bang?
Did consciousness exist before the Big Bang?
Did consciousness evolve into existence in parallel with the first creatures here on Earth?
Does the Universe itself have a consciousness that exist because the Universe exists?
What does science say about when consciousness entered the Universe?
The religious? What would you say?
The spiritual minded folks? Same question.
Any other ideas?

I'd say science and religion can agree here; that consciousness is at the foundation of the material universe

it's physical form required information, & information is immaterial in the sense of having no inherent physical form- or transcending any physical medium. Information which demonstrates a capacity for anticipation- a phenomena unique to a creative mind.

To put it another way 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God'

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The universe exists whether we have a concept of it or not. When we became conscious, that consciousness became part of the universe.

The universe may exist within a higher dimensional existence. We have no concept of it but our consciousness exists within it.

So we are the only means we know of, by which the universe is able to contemplate it's own existence, through us the universe is literally self-aware.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Let’s take your example here and pretend that it consists of 100 critical sections of matter that are necessary for the emergence of consciousness, take any one of these crucial areas away and no consciousness. We have 99 sections in place, so no consciousness. We ADD matter section #100 and consciousness also becomes ADDED to the picture. Physicalism is your model not mine, SHOW me that I’m wrong via empirical detection of this ‘Other’ ADDED part to the picture called consciousness! We can surely empirically detect the added matter, and we can surely empirically detect any patterns or changes of patterns. Explain under a framework of Physicalism how adding material section #100 magically added consciousness to the picture as well. And you can’t just stuff the emergence of phenomenal consciousness underneath the umbrella of the general concept of ‘Emergence’ and claim that they’re all the same basic thing. That would be equivocating the word emergence. Emergence like that of DNA replication is an emergent pattern of biological operations that are purely physical, and the entire process can be fully demonstrated physically.

For some reason you’re convinced that in a model of Physicalism “Adding a certain pattern of mechanics” makes the addition of consciousness an intelligible answer. You’re always making it a point that brain “PATTERNS” cause the addition of consciousness to enter the picture, not just brain matter. But adding a pattern to matter is just adding a pattern to matter, the problem is that consciousness got added too. In a model that says everything is physical, when we have added all 100 physical sections but we still have no consciousness, how is saying “Make it move like this and Wala there’s consciousness” an explanation that connects dots the way that a thorough (physical) scientific explanation usually connects dots? All that you’ve ADDED was a pattern of movement towards your 100 sections of matter. In a model of Physicalism It’s intelligible to explain why a moving fan blade causes a breeze but a static one doesn’t, why a ship in motion causes waves but a docked ship doesn’t. But it would not follow to say “When the yacht goes into motion and reaches full speed the members onboard become conscious and enjoy themselves.”

I'm afraid that looks like one long somewhat emotional argument from incredulity justified by distortion and exaggeration of my argument (i.e. straw-manning).

For the record, it is not being suggested that adding a final 'section of matter' switches on consciousness. Its evolutionary development, roughly mirrored in the structure of the brain, is gradual, from simple awareness through to the rich temporal, autobiographical, and social consciousness of humans.

When I refer to 'patterns' in the brain, I've made it clear that I'm referring to patterns of neural activity characterising a particular mode of brain function, that consists of a particular set of information processes.

But claiming that “Experiencing pain” is just an abstract way of describing “100 sections of matter moving like this” is not an intelligible example of abstraction.

I agree, that's why I don't claim that.

Heaping more & more purely physical complexities on top of the “Matter in motion” doesn’t magically account for the added something called consciousness that is not matter nor motion. Nor does claiming that it’s hard to pin down exactly WHEN consciousness comes into the picture solve anything. WHEN it happens is not the problem for Physicalism, that it happens at all is. And the reason that it doesn’t “Physically” follow is because that which was ADDED to the picture (consciousness) is something that spills outside of the domain of “Physical” description. Trying to bury the explanation underneath 1,000,000,000 interconnected descriptions of purely physical matter & pattern complexities solves nothing. It seems like you’re trying to “Science Talk” your way out of the fact that Physicalism lays on top of a foundation stone of a non sequitur.

You're banging on an open door - I already said the suggested model doesn't solve the hard problem.

What I've said is that the physical model is, in my view, currently the best fit for, and explanation of, the observational evidence. Yes, it has an unsolved problem in reconciling the objective and subjective viewpoints, but it works. It's been tested, it makes fruitful predictions, it has explanatory power, it's parsimonious, it raises only one major question, it's consistent with our existing body of knowledge.

It makes no sense for Dualism to claim that consciousness wouldn’t result in a physical change to the physical world. A non-physical causal influence on a living body would obviously then go ahead and affect the physical world. It’s rigging the game to make a claim that consciousness having an effect on the physical world is proof that consciousness is physical. Of course consciousness will “Lead to” a change to the physical world if Dualism is true.

Positing a non-physical causal power on our bodily actions runs into the Problem of Interaction, but the Dualism model will indeed have a physical body influencing the world and therefore this does not deem everything as physical. It COULD be all physical under these rules but it could also not be under these rules.

Dualism meets these qualifications.

Dualism

There’s no philosophical rock that that Physicalism stands on because Dualism faces the problem of interaction.

What, exactly, do you mean by 'a non-physical causal influence'? In what sense can a physical influence on the world not be a physical cause?

What kind of dualism are you referring to here? If it could all be physical why invoke dualism?

Brains plan action events. A certain area of the cortex are specifically involved in planning a motor movement. “Where those neurons get their input is one of the mysteries of modern neuroscience!” So we also have the problem of input initiations on the other side of the fence. It’s a wash.

Neurons get their inputs from other neurons, eventually ending in internal or external senses and feedbacks. All modified by neurotransmitters. Where the motor neurons get their input from is a mystery because we can't yet trace all the 'circuits' involved; tens of billions of intercommunicating nerve cells make the task tricky.

The problem of interaction for Dualism, and for Physicalism the bizarre problem that in a universe that is said to be a closed system of deterministic causes & effects based on strict laws of motion people would be having input initiations that lead to such bizarre behaviors like hopping on their left leg and singing Bruce Springsteen while clapping, or accidentally stepping off a cliff, or 1,000,000 other goofy and bone headed input initiations that lead to all the crazy & harmful actions of human organisms. This doesn’t resemble any scientific laws of motion that I remember hearing about. Gee it almost seems like people’s minds are exerting input initiations that steer the actions of their physical bodies to make changes in the physical world that have nothing at all to do with strict blind laws of motion inside a universe that’s a closed deterministic system of causes & effects. And it almost seems like these exerted input initiations actually match up to decisions that we make. So yeah Physicalism has it’s own interaction problem too, how to explain the behaviors that we see yet still insist on matter in motion based on strict laws that can’t be violated.

Again, argument from incredulity and misrepresentation. Nobody's suggesting that the laws of motion cause people's behaviour. The laws of motion are relevant to the way things move, not the reasons. The bulk activity of the brain appears to be computational, processing interoceptive and exteroceptive information and initiating internal and external motor activity as a result. This can sometimes produce unpredictable or bizarre behaviour - how is this an argument against physicalism?

When we make decisions or choices, we process information - we assess available options, model their likely outcomes, evaluate those outcomes against our current preferences, try to rank the results and resolve conflicting desires. The whole process may trigger further considerations which feed back in, perhaps changing our current preferences or our option rankings. Finally, we pick an option to act on and act (or not). Most of this occurs below conscious awareness unless we're being particularly deliberative. But even then we generally have little insight into why our preferences are as they are, the unconsciously learned result of a lifetime of evolving interactions between our innate predispositions and our life experiences.

There’s an emergent property called mind. It’s not physical because it runs into logical roadblocks when trying to give physical descriptions to explain it (hence it follows that all of reality can’t be physical), and the emerged mind has causal influence over the body that that mind emerged from.

I already explained that it's a mistake to reify mind. It's an abstract noun we use for the set of processes or activities that perform we call thinking. It has causal influence because it consists of physical processes in a physical substrate.

As I said in a previous post, there are so many claims that get made that are missing an implied “If Physicalism is true” at the end of them. Saying that Physicalism is true, and then saying that such & such isn’t real because we can’t physically reduce it, is arguing in a circle.

Sure. I don't recall anyone arguing that. We can never be sure of what is true about the world. It's not a question of whether physicalism is 'true' or not, we can't know that; the question is whether it can provide a useful model to explain our observations.

You have to decide what you mean by 'reality' and 'physical'. I've given a basic description of what I mean by them, and how I think they apply in this topic.

My implication was that something can’t be physically reducible if it’s not even physical.

That depends what you're talking about; we have different ways of describing the world, and we tend to use ways that are simple, convenient, and familiar. It's a mistake to mix descriptions. Actions, processes, concepts, ideas, etc., are abstract ways of talking about the world at a particular semantic level, much like the use of 'energy' in physics.

But at a different semantic level, actions and processes are reducible to the physical, and abstractions like concepts and ideas represent relations and associations that, however indirectly, ultimately reduce to physical representations of the physical. Concepts and ideas are themselves represented physically; in the brain, on paper, by vibrations in the air, etc.

Your fixating on the wrong thing with regards to Intenionality/Aboutness, and true/false questions not being properties of matter. The point is not that it’s some challenge to rework the terms in a more narrow way so that they can now describe brain processes too, the point is that with mental emergence a wider array of properties enter into reality that “Are about” a plethora of things that matter can’t be about, and that mental emergence introduces a plethora of true/false conditions that are nonsensical to apply towards matter. It is impossible to have a thought that is not about something (a thought about Jupiter, being cold, candy, the future, etc).

I'm not fixating on anything or reworking terms in a 'more narrow' way - I'm suggesting that Hebbian neural networks are excellent models for implementing intentionality as they implicitly create maps of the input data and associations between maps. This kind of mechanism supports the representation of phenomena, a form of memory, associative learning, generalisation, and conceptualisation.

I believe that the point of Intentionality had some type of qualifier where it MUST always be about an object in an Aboutness sentence (or something like that).

I'm not sure that's the case in general. Intentionality is a word for the capability of minds or mental states to represent things, properties, or states of affairs.

I would define mind by coming up with a list of its properties. But again here you’re fixating on the wrong thing. At some point an experiential phenomena gets added onto purely physical materials, and the added phenomena falls outside the scope of explanation via physical description alone. You’re going to war with which word I choose to label it. And of course I don’t think it is physical stuff since that’s the position that I’ve been disagreeing with the entire time.

I'm simply saying that you appear to talk about 'mind' as if it is a 'thing' in its own right, rather than a set of processes or activities. It's a common and convenient way of talking, but it's not, IMO, correct.

But enough of me and my physicalist model; let's hear about your model, explanation, whatever.

What kind of dualism are you suggesting? - your earlier description was confused/confusing.
What does it bring to the table?
How does it help explain or understand what people experience?
How would you test it?
You said it wouldn't have an interaction problem - can you explain how that would work?

BTW - I think predicate dualism is acceptable, even necessary - we need (and use) different ways to talk about the world in different contexts (e.g. subjective and objective).

 

[Tinker Grey]

Hey, no worries. Threads wander all over the place....that's what makes them interesting.

Oh what a tangled thread we weave.

 

[Bradskii]

I'd say science and religion can agree here; that consciousness is at the foundation of the material universe

it's physical form required information, & information is immaterial in the sense of having no inherent physical form- or transcending any physical medium. Information which demonstrates a capacity for anticipation- a phenomena unique to a creative mind.

To put it another way 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God'

I guess you mean information received indirectly. Such as 'Look out, there's a lion approaching'. You don't need to see a physical lion to be aware of the danger. If we saw the lion then that would be physical information. Likewise if we heard it. Or even smelt it. But does it cease being physical info if it's indirect?

But I'll grant you the requirement for anticipation or forward thinking. The info is no good unless you perceive imminent danger. That is, how the info will affect you in the immediate future. But bear in mind that this is an ability that's apparent throughout nature.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I guess you mean information received indirectly. Such as 'Look out, there's a lion approaching'. You don't need to see a physical lion to be aware of the danger. If we saw the lion then that would be physical information. Likewise if we heard it. Or even smelt it. But does it cease being physical info if it's indirect?

I take your point- and to clarify - I mean 'specified' 'functional' 'determining' information v non specifying, Shannon information.- signal v noise.

But I'll grant you the requirement for anticipation or forward thinking. The info is no good unless you perceive imminent danger. That is, how the info will affect you in the immediate future. But bear in mind that this is an ability that's apparent throughout nature.

..and that said, I agree, we can also acknowledge that the sight of the lion is interpreted in our minds as useful information: imminent danger, & we might relay that information by calling out to others, blowing a whistle, writing a sign 'Beware of the lion!' i.e. this information exists independently of the medium- it transcends and pre-dates any physical medium we use to communicate it.

I also agree it's not unique to humans; an explorer stumbling on a neat arrangement of rocks and petals in an uninhabited are of New Guinea recognizes intelligence, even before birds of paradise were known. The guy at SETI who wrote 'WOW' next to a handful of anomalous radio amplitudes, was perceiving a fingerprint of intelligence, not humanity- nothing 'supernatural' implied here, just the objective evidence of intelligence, regardless of how profound the implications may be.

 

[SelfSim]

Information is a concept .. and not something independent from the mind which perceives that concept.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Information is a concept .. and not something independent from the mind which perceives that concept.

Agreed, and so conceptual information can ultimately be traced back to a mind, rather than a material source independent of any mind.

 

[SelfSim]

I take your point- and to clarify - I mean 'specified' 'functional' 'determining' information v non specifying, Shannon information.- signal v noise.

Trying to apply a concept of material or immaterial to information, is pointless from what I can see.

..and that said, I agree, we can also acknowledge that the sight of the lion is interpreted in our minds as useful information: imminent danger, & we might relay that information by calling out to others, blowing a whistle, writing a sign 'Beware of the lion!' i.e. this information exists independently of the medium- it transcends and pre-dates any physical medium we use to communicate it.

It doesn't transcend anything .. its evidently the perceptional model your mind is already aware of.

.. I also agree it's not unique to humans; an explorer stumbling on a neat arrangement of rocks and petals in an uninhabited are of new Guinea recognizes intelligence, even before birds of paradise were known. The guy at SETI who wrote 'WOW' next to a handful of anomalous radio amplitudes, was perceiving a fingerprint of intelligence, not humanity- nothing 'supernatural' implied here, just the objective evidence of intelligence, regardless of how profound the implications may be.

Intelligence is objectively another perceptional model.

 

[SelfSim]

Agreed, and so conceptual information can ultimately be traced back to a mind, rather than a material source independent of any mind.

The idea of a 'material source independent of any mind', is also a perceptional model .. just a different kind of model when compared with say, a rock (model). Rocks can be classified in testable ways whereas a true 'material source independent of any mind', cannot.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The idea of a 'material source independent of any mind', is also a perceptional model .. just a different kind of model when compared with say, a rock (model). Rocks can be classified in testable ways whereas a true 'material source independent of any mind', cannot.

The difference being that a creative mind can create information according to an anticipated future, rather than simply reacting to the past.

That's an extremely definitive distinction, leaving objective fingerprints- and I would say, the only way to ultimately solve the paradox of infinite regression.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

It doesn't transcend anything .. its evidently the perceptional model your mind is already aware of.

right, so concepts held in your mind are not tied to any one physical medium, imagination can transcend/ is unconstrained by, anything that already physically exists, & that comes in pretty handy when creating physical realities!

 

[SelfSim]

The difference being that a creative mind can create information according to an anticipated future, rather than simply reacting to the past.

It can be argued that the concept of the future, requires the capacity of remembering past predictions made, which then turn out as being true in the present, thus leaving one with a perception that the future actually exists. Perhaps that's our minds creating the meaning of 'anticipation' you mention there(?)

That's an extremely definitive distinction, leaving objective fingerprints- and I would say, the only way to ultimately solve the paradox of infinite regression.

Maybe .. but (so the argument goes and somewhat superficially paradoxically), that distinction is still dependent on our ability to recall past events.

Underpinning all of this, is our minds creating our sense of time .. which is absolutely so fundamental for us, it ain't funny!

 

[SelfSim]

right, so concepts held in your mind are not tied to any one physical medium, imagination can transcend/ is unconstrained by, anything that already physically exists, & that comes in pretty handy when creating physical realities!

Well, it certainly seems our (human) imaginations have very extensive capacities, (with some more than others).

Mind you, I think we're all pretty familiar with the aphorism which starts out: 'No-one could ever have imagined, or foreseen .. {etc}'?

 

[Bradskii]

I take your point- and to clarify - I mean 'specified' 'functional' 'determining' information v non specifying, Shannon information.- signal v noise.

But does that make a difference (genuine question - not an argument)? That we have the ability to sift the signal from the noise just means that our receiver is sufficiently evolved to do so. So the same reasoning could apply to us determining the shape of the lion - the signal, from the background - the noise.

 

[Vap841]

Again, argument from incredulity and misrepresentation. Nobody's suggesting that the laws of motion cause people's behaviour. The laws of motion are relevant to the way things move, not the reasons.

So are you saying that we have free will and reason, and that it has causal power over our physical bodies inside of a closed system of strict laws?

The bulk activity of the brain appears to be computational, processing interoceptive and exteroceptive information and initiating internal and external motor activity as a result. This can sometimes produce unpredictable or bizarre behaviour - how is this an argument against physicalism?

So we have a technical explanation about brain processes that conveniently allows for “bizarre” behaviors that just so happens to match up perfectly with what things would look like if people had wills that have causal influences over physical bodies, and these wills make decisions, and these decisions tend to be goofy at times, or bone headed, or cause self injury, etc. So brain processes have an error factor that perfectly matches up with the “Myth” of a non-computational mind? Wow what a convenient error factor for scientific consensus!

Burying explanations in scientific jargon is a self fulfilling prophecy. There’s no behaviors whatsoever that humans could possibly engage in that can’t conveniently be explained away by technical scientific talk. Even worse you actually used the words “Appears To” in your reply. Why do you rebel against embracing BOTH science, and the complicated goofy funny but also dangerous mess called human minds? I don’t protest science, science is awesome, I just call out cases where people get too seduced by science and refuse to let our will in.

Humans literally step back from their evolutionary instincts, and they get behind their default perceptions and their default illusion of reality that evolution has equipped us with…and we have the capacity to second guess it all and go against it in the direction of our choice. Same exact situation for our cultural conditioning, we can also step back from it, re-evaluate it, and make a more informed final decision. We also repeatedly challenge the default illusion of ultimate reality on a grand scale that evolution has given us, we constantly seek out what it really looks like IN DEFIANCE OF evolution. None of these things are required for survival in our surroundings, or for our procreation. So we can’t explain this with evolutionary theory…but gee I’ll bet all the money that I have that you could conveniently come up with a “More Robust” scientific explanation for this that excludes the obvious conclusion that we have wills that have causal power over our physical bodies. Of course you can when you practice a self fulfilling prophecy where nothing can ever fall outside of scientific jargon.

Psychology needs to co-exist with scientific theories in order to explain us...as opposed to the claims that psychology “Reduces” to physics. How do you explain the success of psychology? In the 19th century it shocked many scientifically minded people that you could actually help troubled patients by just talking to them (as opposed to the theory that every problem with the mind was just due to some physical or chemical ailment or deformity). But again, the self fulfilling prophecy of scientific consensus will no doubt be able to explain this one away as well with technical scientific processes of some sort. Don’t you think it gets pretty ad hoc?

I'm afraid that looks like one long somewhat emotional argument from incredulity justified by distortion and exaggeration of my argument (i.e. straw-manning).

For the record, it is not being suggested that adding a final 'section of matter' switches on consciousness. Its evolutionary development, roughly mirrored in the structure of the brain, is gradual, from simple awareness through to the rich temporal, autobiographical, and social consciousness of humans.

When I refer to 'patterns' in the brain, I've made it clear that I'm referring to patterns of neural activity characterising a particular mode of brain function, that consists of a particular set of information processes.

I was in no way striving for any kind of neuroscience accuracy here, it was a totally made up scenario for the thought experiment of how adding a key section of matter would be the missing ingredient for consciousness. Brakskii gave me an earful on this as well haha.

The problem of psychophysical emergence doesn’t disappear if consciousness was a process of incremental steps. You have the same exact problem of psychophysical emergence for bodies & minds developing together in incremental stages. I wouldn’t change anything in my posts if we were talking about any earlier preliminary stages of consciousness, or the entire process, or even a stage of consciousness that takes place in one individual fetus. The arguments are the same.

Lol which part made you think I was emotional? I wasn’t angry or emotional but you saying that makes me think that I may have sounded cocky somewhere, my bad!!

If anything I’m emotional that I JUST found out that I lost my apartment key and I’m locked out ugh! So I’ll have to cut the reply short (to make things worse I can’t drive anywhere because I’ve been drinking lol, I have a spare with a friend that’s 10 miles away lol). Wait, did I actually say “Cut the reply short” lol? I’m the longest posting wind bag in this place and even this reply is long Haha

 

[dlamberth]

How do you define consciousness? what are its properties? In what sense can it be an 'ocean'?

Consciousness is something we do, yet has no properties. It can't be defined yet we all have it. It's like an ocean in that it's all around us. If we take human beings alone, not counting all of the animals, there are billions of human consciousness walking about. It's hard not to bump into another consciousness in human form.

You make it sound like a substance that has spatial extent, but everything we've discovered suggests that it's a temporal process.

I couldn't be typing this with out being conscious of what I'm doing, temporal or not. Personally I go with the spatial extent. It's kind of like substance that has no substance. And consciousness extends beyond the body, sometimes with great reach.

If matter is a precipitate of consciousness, then it is effectively solidified consciousness. But everything we've discovered suggests that matter is emergent from the excitations of mathematically describable quantum fields.

We are matter that has consciousness. And we all know how consciousness can't be grabbed like a solid. Yet this solid, that being my body, has consciousness. It's an interesting phenomena.

I think you're dressing up hand-wavy mysticism in the language of empirical science to give it an impression of scientific rigour and rationality. This is a common ploy among mystics and woo merchants - probably best avoided if you want to be taken seriously.

This whole conversation on consciousness is in line with Mysticism. When the language and the way of the Mystic is not understood, at that point I agree, it's probably best for that person to avoid anything to do with that particular spiritual trajectory. When it is understood though, a whole new world opens up to a person.

 

[Bradskii]

So we have a technical explanation about brain processes that conveniently allows for “bizarre” behaviors that just so happens to match up perfectly with what things would look like if people had wills...

The brain processes don't 'match up' with what we define as free will. Those processes are what we call free will.

Now go get a cab. And get a spare apartment key and fix it to the underside of your car.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

But does that make a difference (genuine question - not an argument)? That we have the ability to sift the signal from the noise just means that our receiver is sufficiently evolved to do so. So the same reasoning could apply to us determining the shape of the lion - the signal, from the background - the noise.

It means that in many cases we can identify the existence of meaningful information which has been created with anticipation.

Of course we can have false negatives, perhaps interstellar radio-noise is full of encoded ET signals we can't detect. But false positives become very rare the greater the quality and quantity of information.

So regarding the shape of the lion, it communicates danger, but so does a cliff edge, a body of water.. i.e. this information in and of itself is not highly specific.

But the lion also specifies much more- the capacity of acute sight, hearing, an anticipation of your reaction, and a sophisticated system of digital code in it's DNA giving it this ability to entirely ruin your day, and that I would argue certainly does provide the fingerprint of creative intelligence.