Quantum consciousness...

[The Grand Nudger]

So did your dad have a nursery growing these plants?  Pretty cool.  I've come to adore plants but never got into them early on.  My first obsession was animals.  Living in San Diego and visiting the zoo as a kid I read everything our local library had on animals and their behavior.  Of course you can't keep exotic critters in your backyard while you can grow any plant from anywhere in the world whose needs you can satisfy - and where I live you can access almost anything.

Yep, we were the biggest landscaper in the state (and he started out mowing his friends parents lawns in the officer district S. of MacDill AFB).  Nobody could adequately supply us so he (my siblings father) bought the land directly adjacent to Tampa Bay Downs as a nursery.  Whenever school was in that's where I spent most of my time.  Place looked like a jungle.  There are condos and a shopping plaza there now.  Sucks ass.  I won't drive by it.  Whenever school was out I was north and inland in Gainesville, digging peanuts and chasing pigs on a converted magnolia nursery, when I wasn;t poaching the state park it bordered...ofc. lol.  

Obviously, I was doomed to some form of quasi pagan nature worship from the start. For laughs...despite literally growing up in plants and nurseries...I couldn't get a job working on a yard crew when I first moved to KY. I tried, they passed.

So I wonder if you feel like you got back the same mind you started with or if you traded up?  Seems like a pretty nimble model you got there now.  Went through a one time depression which turned out to be transformative in some ways.  Before and after feel a bit discontinuous.  I like this side better.

I'm unrecognizable, before and after.  I know it, my friends are still a -little- uncomfortable with it...my family laments the loss. I couldn;t care less. Old me fucked up, alot, and made bad decisions for stupid reasons, lol.

[bennyboy]

But those abilities and structures, whether you call them byproducts, emergent or accidental, are all retained because they confer an evolutionary advantage. So what evolutionary advantage is conferred by consciousness?

If by consciousness, you mean an organism's ability to interact with its environment, I'd argue that a QM particle very obviously has that: its resolved state is dependent on what happens outside itself, and QM experiments go to pretty elaborate lengths, actually, to attempt to confound it.

If by consciousness, you mean the capacity to experience qualia, we are completely agnostic on that with regard to evolution. In order to demonstrate that something is an evolved trait, you have first to be able to demonstrate that it is a real property of organisms. However, there are no fossils of qualia. To talk about the evolution of consciousness, we'd have to develop a completely unprovable narrative, and I don't see how we could avoid begging the question in a particularly horrible way.

Even the word "advantage" is pretty dangerous, as it implies a goal and a path to achieve it. To say that evolution has goals is to say that a pair of dice dreams of coming up double-6.

[I_am_not_mafia]

But those abilities and structures, whether you call them byproducts, emergent or accidental, are all retained because they confer an evolutionary advantage. So what evolutionary advantage is conferred by consciousness?

If by consciousness, you mean an organism's ability to interact with its environment, I'd argue that a QM particle very obviously has that: its resolved state is dependent on what happens outside itself, and QM experiments go to pretty elaborate lengths, actually, to attempt to confound it.

If by consciousness, you mean the capacity to experience qualia, we are completely agnostic on that with regard to evolution.  In order to demonstrate that something is an evolved trait, you have first to be able to demonstrate that it is a real property of organisms.  However, there are no fossils of qualia.  To talk about the evolution of consciousness, we'd have to develop a completely unprovable narrative, and I don't see how we could avoid begging the question in a particularly horrible way.

I mean neither of those things when I refer to consciousness. A non-conscious agent can still interact with an environment. And I would never define consciousness in undefinable terms such as qualia.

I would define consciousness in terms of its functionality. I can almost feel Khemikal reaching for this keyboard right now but it does aid agents in exploiting their environment. And as much as everyone here is quibbling about how I am phrasing things (advantage, functionality, higher etc) because you assume that I don't understand how evolution works (I do, better than both you and Khemikal), absolutely no one has yet answered the following:

What evidence or reason is there to assume that consciousness requires quantum effects in order to occur?

As far as I can see there is absolutely none and there is absolutely no reason to believe that we need quantum mechanics to create consciousness.

[I_am_not_mafia]

If something doesn't kill us and confers advantages it's likely to persist and spread.  It's not really that things come about for a reason - that would be teleology.  They persist for a reason, or do not persist for a reason - that's evolution.

I never said that things come about for a reason.

It isn't actually how evolution works. A plant has no ability to grow a brain, liver or kidney even by accident. There is just no physical mechanism in place where those plant genes could be expressed as a such a complex organ. It inhabits the completely wrong part of evolutionary space for that. That's not to say that a plant could not evolve them given sufficient time if the environmental pressures were there.

Unless you have completely redefined what is meant by a brain, liver and kidney that is.

The evolution of complex organs in plants would be deleterious, not advantageous.

Ah right so now you've changed what you're talking about and referring to the evolution of complex organs in plants. That's not what I was arguing against. To remind you, you said this:

If you consider how each rep is embodied (a subject I know you enjoy) the differences in how they achieve the same advantage may be illuminated.  Plants, for example..cant run...and so, organs are costly.  A plant with a brain like ours is making one hell of a biological gamble.

By referring to it as a biological gamble you made it sound like you were referring to the possibility of a plant growing a whole brain when previous plants were unable to. If this is what you mean then you are wrong because as I pointed out, a plant cannot suddenly grow a brain regardless of whether it is deleterious or not. If this is not what you meant then you were wrong to refer to it as a biological gamble, because to evolve to the point where it would be capable of growing a brain there would have to have been an evolutionary pressure to develop the mechanisms by which it would be able to grow a brain, in which case it wouldn't be that much of a gamble.

Some of them provide abilities that fit the basic metrics of cognizance.  They use these adaptations to cognizance to deal with the same problems that we use our brains to deal with.  We posit that our consciousness confers advantages x,y,z...but a plant uses those other things, it's non-conscious analogs, to secure the same x, y, and z's.  This is what I've been referring to when I propose that the advantages of what we take to be consciousness are not overwhelmingly or uniformly different from the advantage of things we take to be non conscious, that the reason for the persistence of consciousness as cognizance and "other x" as cognizance are widely the same.  No specific and absolute advantage is presented by one, over the other.  Just two ways to skin the same cat.

Take what I said earlier about emotion narrowing the range of actions likely to occur and cognition widening the range. This happens over the course of an agent's lifetime. Yet you can also make the same argument comparing cognition and instinct. Instinct is learnt over evolutionary time, cognition allows a single agent to learn faster. Cognition provides benefits for the agent in exploiting their immediate environment whereas evolutionary strategies only benefit the offspring in exploiting their environmental niche.

You can also make the same comparison with general intelligence and evolution. An intelligent species of predator or prey hunt / escape more often and more effectively than if the species improved over time through evolution. This is because evolution is a very slow process. Intelligence is many orders of magnitude faster. Seen in terms of self organisation, there is a thermodynamic pressure on both the development of intelligence and evolution to maximise entropy, and intelligence does this faster, more effectively and efficiently.

So you argue that any advantages that consciousness can bring an agent can also be achieved via other means, and I don't necessarily deny that. But I would argue that consciousness brings about those advantages faster. In terms of self organisation, intelligence and consciousness allow the thermodynamic gradient to be minimised to a greater degree than can be achieved through the evolutionary process alone.

Is this a useful concept? Is there any evidence that we need to differentiate between 'experience in' and 'experience of' ? Is there an objective way of determining whether an organism is 'in the sensation' rather than having an 'experience of it'? Can a human with brain damage or a neurodegenerative disease have experience of pain when they would normally have experience being in it? If not then it sounds like a pointless philosophical concept to me.

Is it a useful concept, sure, in that in gives specificity.

Specificity of what? Show me how it is a useful concept.

I'd argue then that sea rocket is developing the first rudimentary levels of consciousness. Any organism that needs a sense of self and a sense of others, whether it is because it is predator, prey or part of a pack or colony that has to co-ordinate its actions, will benefit from consciousness.

Sea rocket isn't alone in that - it's only alone in it's merciless kin selection.  -All- plants have absurdly well developed sensory apparatus, a rich sensual life, all plants benefit from a way of handling and using the information that their sensory apparatus creates - but none have brains and perhaps none have consciousness of any sort.  There's really nothing rudimentary about them, at all.   

Why assume that the ability to process needs to be centralised in a brain? Two thirds of the neurons of an octopus are found in its tentacles. Only one third is found in its brain. I personally grow carnivorous plants so I am well aware of how some plants can sense and move very fast, yet also avoid being fooled by extraneous sensory stimuli.

An unrooted parasitic germinate, with no central nervous system and nary a single complex organ, that's..on average, 5cm long...is both mobile and capable of performing action selection.  The question becomes, does consciousness actually help it, or would it, in any way, or is consciousness an elaborate story we tell ourselves about how parasitic vines pick solanum out of a crowd and inch their way towards it

If the unrooted parasitic vine was more effectively able to act in co-ordination with fellow vines, or the Solanum was actively trying to avoid it by deploying a trap that relied on the vine's most likely response, then yes, I could see an advantage in the vine evolving consciousness. But the interaction is not that complex so there is no pressure for consciousness to evolve. Using plants as an example is a false equivalence.

So getting back to the original point I was making:

2) Why should this functionality be provided at the quantum level rather than at the level of a network of neurons?

My answer to your question isn't that consciousness should be provided at any specific level, simply that it isn't at some, and we have some indications as to why.  Similarly, there's no reason that it should be provided at the level of neurons (or whatever the fuck plants are doing at any given moment)....but, in both cases, it either is or possibly is or something like what we call consciousness is present in both (huge caveat for misapprehensions we have about it).  What I wonder, is what it is that both plants, and brains are doing.  Are they achieving the same end in a meaningfully different way, or are they achieving the same end in the same way with meaningfully different architectures.  What is the shared unit or method of cognizance, if there is one...and if there isn't...just how many ways -are- there to skin that cat?

That wasn't really what I meant by my question so I shall rephrase it. I can see now how it was ambiguous. Either way we are probably in agreement that systems at the quantum level are probably not conscious. So rephrasing the question:

What reason is there to believe that quantum mechanics are required to explain consciousness?

I see none at all.

[The Grand Nudger]

in terms of its functionality. I can almost feel Khemikal reaching for this keyboard right now 

teehee 

Only because a definition from functionality doesn't require consciousness as opposed to cognizance.  No functional benefit of consciousness seems unique to consciousness, and we can find all of the proposed functional benefits of consciousness present in cognizance - even in minimal cognizance...and most of them even in the absence of cognizance  

It's like asking why freckles evolved as distinct from what advantage melanin confers.  There's no reason that freckles evolved, they serve no functional purpose, no specific advantage....they aren't even meaningfully distinct from "melanin production/distribution/concentration in the skin"....and yet they're widely present in our breeding population.  Their existence as a heritable trait has plenty to do with sexual selection - but that;s well after the fact.  Freckles, specifically, didn;t emerge as an adaptive solution, melanin did as UV protection..it's only that the mechanism of -that- expresses itself in a particular way, with consequence and ancillary effect, that freckles exist.

Do you think it's possible that, as some hard reductivist theories/hypothesis of mind posit - the same may be true of consciousness? That there is no meaningful distinction between of/in..and so, the question, what benefit does consciousness, itself, provide...becomes a nonsensical question?

( I also describe/explain "consciousness" in terms of it's functionality, btw, but I explicitly own valid criticisms of that manner of response. I do think that some people take those valid criticisms and spin them into non-seqs, though.)

---

I never said that things come about for a reason.

Asking why something evolved, for what reason, is asking precisely that.  Perhaps unintentionally, as an artifact of poor phrasing. Ergo the reason for piping up.

Ah right so now you've changed what you're talking about and referring to the evolution of complex organs in plants. That's not what I was arguing against. To remind you, you said this:

By referring to it as a biological gamble you made it sound like you were referring to the possibility of a plant growing a whole brain when previous plants were unable to. If this is what you mean then you are wrong because as I pointed out, a plant cannot suddenly grow a brain regardless of whether it is deleterious or not. If this is not what you meant then you were wrong to refer to it as a biological gamble, because to evolve to the point where it would be capable of growing a brain there would have to have been an evolutionary pressure to develop the mechanisms by which it would be able to grow a brain, in which case it wouldn't be that much of a gamble.

A simple misunderstanding, then.  I don't see any barrier of possibility, I see biological constraints which prevent that possibility being actualized.  There -is- evolutionary pressure to "develop a brain" - all of the same evolutionary pressure we face.  There are strong negative evolutionary pressures to plants when it comes to -any- complex organ.  They simply cannot flee predation, so however they achieve any effect x takes that negative selective pressure into account.  If you have a brain, you can't afford having a bite taken out of it.  Plants are nibbled on with regularity.  They achieve many of the same effects we achieve with complex organs like brains by leveraging "simpler" more (and more quickly) replicable structures.  I use simple as a term of art and concordance between us - those structures and strategies are absurdly well developed and wildly successful.

Take what I said earlier about emotion narrowing the range of actions likely to occur and cognition widening the range. This happens over the course of an agent's lifetime. Yet you can also make the same argument comparing cognition and instinct. Instinct is learnt over evolutionary time, cognition allows a single agent to learn faster. Cognition provides benefits for the agent in exploiting their immediate environment whereas evolutionary strategies only benefit the offspring in exploiting their environmental niche.

You can also make the same comparison with general intelligence and evolution. An intelligent species of predator or prey hunt / escape more often and more effectively than if the species improved over time through evolution. This is because evolution is a very slow process. Intelligence is many orders of magnitude faster. Seen in terms of self organisation, there is a thermodynamic pressure on both the development of intelligence and evolution to maximise entropy, and intelligence does this faster, more effectively and efficiently.

So you argue that any advantages that consciousness can bring an agent can also be achieved via other means, and I don't necessarily deny that. But I would argue that consciousness brings about those advantages faster. In terms of self organisation, intelligence and consciousness allow the thermodynamic gradient to be minimised to a greater degree than can be achieved through the evolutionary process alone.

How and why does consciousness bring about those advantages, whatever they are, faster?  When considering the advantages of consciousness over cognizance we are not considering "evolutionary advantages" - heritable advantages.  We're considering two allegedly disparate systems that are both capable of exceeding, in a sense, their evolutionary inheritance.  

(It might also be useful to point out that your comments on intelligence as it relates to self organization and entropy here and before are, themselves, a form of natural teleology. Not telling you that you're wrong - I wouldn't know.)

Specificity of what? Show me how it is a useful concept.

One can't speak of the advantages of consciousness over cognizance without explicit or implicit reference to it.  I don't think it's accurate, personally.  

Why assume that the ability to process needs to be centralised in a brain? Two thirds of the neurons of an octopus are found in its tentacles. Only one third is found in its brain. I personally grow carnivorous plants so I am well aware of how some plants can sense and move very fast, yet also avoid being fooled by extraneous sensory stimuli.

I don't.  I don't think it needs to be centralized, I don't even think it requires a living organism.  ....?

If the unrooted parasitic vine was more effectively able to act in co-ordination with fellow vines, or the Solanum was actively trying to avoid it by deploying a trap that relied on the vine's most likely response, then yes, I could see an advantage in the vine evolving consciousness. But the interaction is not that complex so there is no pressure for consciousness to evolve. Using plants as an example is a false equivalence.

They actively avoid them by releasing those VOC signals to call predators.  What advantage could you see, and how is consciousness disparate from cognizance (which, by definition, both the vine and the voc callers already possess)?  That;s the question that people criticizing statements like these are asking you.  

That wasn't really what I meant by my question so I shall rephrase it. I can see now how it was ambiguous. Either way we are probably in agreement that systems at the quantum level are probably not conscious.

Very much in agreement, lol, yes.

So rephrasing the question:

What reason is there to believe that quantum mechanics are required to explain consciousness?

I see none at all.

I don't see any reason to believe that our consciousness or even cognizance rely, meaningfully, on quantum effects, myself.

[bennyboy]

I would define consciousness in terms of its functionality.

The function of consciousness is to allow matter to subjectively experience what itself and its surroundings are like. If you want it not to mean that, then you should choose a word that doesn't mean that. Redefining an idea out of existence isn't a good way to deal with whatever it was the word used to talk about.

I can almost feel Khemikal reaching for this keyboard right now but it does aid agents in exploiting their environment. And as much as everyone here is quibbling about how I am phrasing things (advantage, functionality, higher etc) because you assume that I don't understand how evolution works

My source of contention has nothing to do with your understanding of how evolution works. It's that we are switching between an objective-based vocabulary and a subjective-based one. Evolution isn't an agent. It doesn't do things. It has no goals. At its most essential "evolution" is simply a term for what happens when you have a balance between material entropy and order such that some patterns persist over time and some do not.

Biological evolution as we talk about it is just a snapshot of that more general interaction: we've arrived at a particular kind of pattern which persists over time in particular ways. All the words you are using are part of the narrative of subjective agency, not of material interactions.

(I do, better than both you and Khemikal), absolutely no one has yet answered the following:
What evidence or reason is there to assume that consciousness requires quantum effects in order to occur?

By what evidence would you judge that something is / isn't conscious? If we're really going to study it, how would you identify that you are in fact observing consciousness at all?

I know when something's red. I look at it, I say red, you say red, we agree it's red. The standard for redness (tint aside) is crystal clear: collect light and determine if it's of that frequency we label "red." Not so for consciousness.

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I don't see any reason to believe that our consciousness or even cognizance rely, meaningfully, on quantum effects, myself.

Why? Is it your position that once a new property has supervened, it is independent in some way of the properties or systems on which it supervened?

Consciousness needs brain needs neurons needs molecules needs atoms needs QM effects, no? At what stage of this organization do you think "meaningful reliance" emerges, and why?

I've argued this in the past, that identical properties can emerge on different systems, meaning that they are not after all functionally reliant on those underlying systems. Are you making this argument now?

(As an example, I'd say that wings could evolve in organic animals, in silicon based life forms, or in self-replicating robots. I'd say that while you need SOME organization to sustain information, the "wing" idea has an identity of its own, separate from any of the various mechanisms that could potentially sustain it)

[The Grand Nudger]

Why?  Is it your position that once a new property has supervened, it is independent in some way of the properties or systems on which it supervened?

Consciousness needs brain needs neurons needs molecules needs atoms needs QM effects, no?  At what stage of this organization do you think "meaningful reliance" emerges, and why?

I've argued this in the past, that identical properties can emerge on different systems, meaning that they are not after all functionally reliant on those underlying systems.  Are you making this argument now?

(As an example, I'd say that wings could evolve in organic animals, in silicon based life forms, or in self-replicating robots.  I'd say that while you need SOME organization to sustain information, the "wing" idea has an identity of its own, separate from any of the various mechanisms that could potentially sustain it)

I thought of forming my response to Matthilda to specifically deal with the nonsense I knew you'd say, but then thought to myself.."nah, fuck it, let him step right into a mound of bullshit."



Flight also relies on qm effects...but, meaningfully, bernoulli's principle is a better explanation for that specific subject regardless of what a wing is made of (ignoring, ofc, that wings aren't required for flight, lelz).  My taking a shit is also "a qm effect" in the same way that flight is a qm effect, and in the same way that consciousness appears to be a qm effect, for what it's worth....which aint much.

[bennyboy]

Flight also relies on qm effects...but, meaningfully, bernoulli's principle is a better explanation for that specific subject regardless of what a wing is made of (ignoring, ofc, that wings aren't required for flight, lelz).  My taking a shit is also "a qm effect" in the same way that flight is a qm effect, and in the same way that consciousness appears to be a qm effect, for what it's worth....which aint much.

Show me a non-arbitrary line in the sand that is much. Brain waving's fine if you have a brain and you suspect it to be fully conscious. It doesn't do much, however, as an actual explanation of why there is such a thing as consciousness, given any particular system, rather than not. Nor does it help us identify what physical systems or processes do have the capacity to experience what things are like.

You've already said you believe mind is not binary. That means it must extend from very simple systems which we would say are not conscious, or are kinda conscious, or slightly conscious, or whatever, up into human consciousness. So where do YOU think the cut line is? What do YOU think are the most fundamental criteria?

My belief is that there can be no such line. If there is no line, then any line drawn is an expression only of our way of looking at things, and not of the reality of any property to be found in the Universe.

[The Grand Nudger]

You sometimes seem to forget that I don;t think that we -are- conscious.  

You ask questions that sound like superstitious gibberish to me, and when I answer them from the POV you ask (my own)...you insist that some other superstitious gibberish is more likely, or true. When I agree, you disagree with my agreeing, and when I disagree, you disagree with my disagreement.

Honestly, after all the times we've had this convo, how can you still not know what I think?

[I_am_not_mafia]

I would define consciousness in terms of its functionality.

The function of consciousness is to allow matter to subjectively experience what itself and its surroundings are like.

No that is what it does, that isn't the reason that consciousness developed. It is not unusual to define things in terms of their function. For example a flat bit of wood on some legs could either be a stool or a table. Or even a collection of binary electrical charges if used to depict a table or chair within computer game or simulation.

Sure we can define some things in terms of what they do, e.g. lightning, but some things cannot be unambiguously defined in that way, e.g. consciousness, emotions etc. Terms such as qualia and subjective cannot be defined unambiguously when talking about consciousness.

Evolution isn't an agent.  It doesn't do things.  It has no goals.  At its most essential "evolution" is simply a term for what happens when you have a balance between material entropy and order such that some patterns persist over time and some do not.

I never once said otherwise. But I still feel that words like higher and advantage are applicable. Using the classic analogy of a ball rolling down a hill, yes, it is a neutral process that happens rather than the ball trying to reach a goal. But on the other hand, it is a process of minimising free energy and there are certain things that can be advantageous for example in finding the lowest spot on a landscape (e.g. a ball instead of a boulder, wind to blow it out of a low minima etc). Same with evolution. It is also a form of self organisation.