RE: Consciousness
July 13, 2025 at 7:42 pm
(This post was last modified: July 13, 2025 at 7:59 pm by Alan V.)
Consciousness can emerge from non-consciousness through evolution, in gradual steps. The emergence of consciousness from deep sleep is more complex.
Yes, we can dream for a couple hours every night without remembering our dreams, because our working memories don't work because we are robbed of our waking neuromodulation. However, once people wake up and try to remember their dreams, they can recover a lot of information, since their working memories and neuromodulation are on-line again. Dream researchers have woken people from all stages of sleep to understand their subjective experiences. There is a poverty of subjective reports from deep sleep, suggesting that such a reduced consciousness is on-again-off-again at best.
However, that is not really my argument. I quoted the signatures of consciousness from my reading. Those were derived from waking studies in which people reported whether they saw something or not in certain carefully staged threshold conditions, i.e. things on the edge of awareness. If people weren't experiencing something, they did not evidence the signatures. When they were, they did. So scientists can, in fact, know objectively when people are conscious by reading the signatures in brainscans, and not just via subjective reports in every case.
We know that once there was no consciousness on earth and now there is, because we know that consciousness depends on lifeforms with brains. Your whole argument depends on redefining consciousness in ways in which we do not experience it. We literally lack consciousness of your redefined consciousness. That is why you still have the burden of proof. You are asserting it is there, so prove it and collect your Nobel Prize. Don't try to shift the burden of proof on others. That's an old trick from the theistic playbook.
Consciousness is not concrete. It is abstract, being a variety of information processing accomplished in physical brains. A lot of information processing is non-conscious. We know that for a fact. So we can indeed derive an abstract (conscious information processing) from an abstract (non-conscious information processing). Is isn't such a big step as you claim. The hard problem may boil down to understanding the details of a certain kind of brain-wide information processing, where information is shared across systems.
As I said before, you really need to read about brain science. Scientists understand a lot more than you think.
Yes, we can dream for a couple hours every night without remembering our dreams, because our working memories don't work because we are robbed of our waking neuromodulation. However, once people wake up and try to remember their dreams, they can recover a lot of information, since their working memories and neuromodulation are on-line again. Dream researchers have woken people from all stages of sleep to understand their subjective experiences. There is a poverty of subjective reports from deep sleep, suggesting that such a reduced consciousness is on-again-off-again at best.
However, that is not really my argument. I quoted the signatures of consciousness from my reading. Those were derived from waking studies in which people reported whether they saw something or not in certain carefully staged threshold conditions, i.e. things on the edge of awareness. If people weren't experiencing something, they did not evidence the signatures. When they were, they did. So scientists can, in fact, know objectively when people are conscious by reading the signatures in brainscans, and not just via subjective reports in every case.
We know that once there was no consciousness on earth and now there is, because we know that consciousness depends on lifeforms with brains. Your whole argument depends on redefining consciousness in ways in which we do not experience it. We literally lack consciousness of your redefined consciousness. That is why you still have the burden of proof. You are asserting it is there, so prove it and collect your Nobel Prize. Don't try to shift the burden of proof on others. That's an old trick from the theistic playbook.
Quote:Emergence is very much a problem for emergentists. You claim that consciousness emerges from non-conscious beings. But how can that possibly be the case? It would be like getting concrete things out of abstract things. It would be a very radical or brute emergence.
Consciousness is not concrete. It is abstract, being a variety of information processing accomplished in physical brains. A lot of information processing is non-conscious. We know that for a fact. So we can indeed derive an abstract (conscious information processing) from an abstract (non-conscious information processing). Is isn't such a big step as you claim. The hard problem may boil down to understanding the details of a certain kind of brain-wide information processing, where information is shared across systems.
As I said before, you really need to read about brain science. Scientists understand a lot more than you think.
