Consciousness

[genkaus]

For me, I would set the pole very low. If a thing has a choice, and consistently makes choices which seem to be in its own interests, I would say there is some self-awareness there.

That's the question, isn't it? How do you determine that it is making a choice and not simply following its biological imperative?

[jonb]

For me, I would set the pole very low. If a thing has a choice, and consistently makes choices which seem to be in its own interests, I would say there is some self-awareness there.

That's the question, isn't it? How do you determine that it is making a choice and not simply following its biological imperative?

I told you I set the bar very low, as I could not distinguish between the two, I would say both, and then have to deal with the problem of; self that is not conscious.

[The Grand Nudger]

Stab in the dark -could you be a gorilla or a poodle- given the circumstances of your birth? That might help to explain why you are not.

[HorribleOffensiveScouser91]

Count yourself lucky you are the human

The old Socrates statement 'better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied' Not so long ago I'd have said the pig, because it doesn't have the stress and pain of a human....it is only when you look at the humans around you who don't think deeply on issues and who live their lives around what pop culture gives them in thwir ivory tower that you realise it is better to be a dissatisfied human. Although the pains are greater, so too are the pleasures...it is rather extreme emotions good and bad over constant complacency. I prefer the first.

[Welsh cake]

It has been driving me crazy. Why am I not a gorilla in the amazon or an old lady's poodle? I don't have anything else to add really...

Brain chemistry.

Well fuck, I hate it when I do this. I've shut down all further lines of inquiry.

[Angrboda]

And Solon considered that only the dead were truly fortunate.

Choice and will, ignoring that in my view they both are just dependent responses, are difficult to discern in the same way that intelligent design is difficult to detect, because it's an artificial attribute attached to a collection of things, based on suppositions about processes "independent of the thing being examined." If we knew all the potential processes by which a thing could be designed, and the history of any specific artifact, we'd know whether it was designed or not. But instead, we're left looking for the appearance of design, which doesn't appear to differ in any systematic way from the appearance of undesigned structural or genitive order. Because they're attempting to infer design from the ways in which the finished products, designed or not, differ from each other, they're reasoning backwards from effect to cause, which is very difficult. In much the same way, people who are attempting to infer consciousness, or the awareness of pain or whatever, are performing a similar operation: attempting to reason backward from the effect — the behavior — to the causative process, namely consciousness or awareness. And just as it's almost impossible to tell in any systematic way, reasoning backward from the effect in design, so it's near impossible to set forth what "the appearance" of consciously motivated behavior would look like. (And people who know lovers who return time and time again to bad relationships know, it's not always clear in our own case; enter the emergence of the unconscious and psychotherapy.) Moreover, we are biologically loaded to "over-perceive" purpose and intent in our environment, in addition to being weak reasoners, infected with strong distorting cognitive biases; so we're geared to see the presence of design and intelligence even where it isn't present.

Thus the unending debate about free will, for one. My views on the subject are well known; I don't view the behaviors of the fly as categorically different from ours: they're both composed of neural circuits performing computations. Nothing more. So I guess I'd turn the question around and ask why you feel being you is all that different from being a gorilla or a poodle? To me, there's likely more similarity than difference, including in those aspects in which you consider yourselves distinctive. I, too, set the bar rather low, but for a different reason. I suspect that the primary purpose of consciousness, originally, was to form a coherent representation of "the self" in order to allow for coordinated, self-interested behaviors (and by self, I don't mean mental attributes like emotions, ideas, self-reflection and so on; when I refer to consciousness as being the evolution of a "self representation", I'm referring to the basic components such as the self having a body, being "inside" the body, that "its thoughts" cause the body to do things, that "its eyes" see the world from the perspective of the body [not exactly true, as human selves are situated "within" a three dimensional world, which seems the default, even in the absence of physical confirmation of the fact]). The consciousness that I'm thinking of is just a model for coordinating the needs of the organism with its knowledge of the environment which permits the emergence of complex behaviors "keyed" to certain combinations. I'm certain that very complex behaviors are possible without an integrated model of self and environment. However, I think a rudimentary consciousness of this sort would be a natural development, and be adaptive. Over time, perhaps, additions to the mental machinery generating this model would occur, adding additional features and nuances [like the modeling of other minds or the incorporation of linguistic elements]. However, I don't think there is likely any "quantum leap" from such early, rudimentary consciousness; just incremental steps, and occasional additions (for example, consider Julian Jaynes' thesis of the emergence of [modern] consciousness in the [alleged] breakdown of the bicameral mind; a subtle qualitative shift in the model, but all the pieces are essentially there both before and after).

(ps. I forget which book it was in, but there's a condition in which the information from the inner ear, regarding balance, is defective or defectively relayed to the brain. Such people may have the continual experience that they are falling, even when they are lying on the ground. It just shows how visceral our perception of the self is. [There's also some interesting observation's in Damasio's Self Comes To Mind; for most of our sensory nerves, they're divided into nerves which monitor the viscera, or internal organs, and those which monitor other things, and different brain circuits serve each. The brain, consciousness or no, is essentially the body's slave, structured to serve its needs. So much for Plato's 'spiritual' component of human nature.])

[JDFlood]

It has been driving me crazy. Why am I not a gorilla in the amazon or an old lady's poodle? I don't have anything else to add really...

Personally I think the question is a little like mental masterbation, a little bit in private is a good thing, in public makes you look silly.

[downbeatplumb]

Tide goes in tide goes out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb3AFMe2OQY

[JDFlood]

It has been driving me crazy. Why am I not a gorilla in the amazon or an old lady's poodle? I don't have anything else to add really...

Personally I think the question is a little like mental masterbation, a little bit in private is a good thing, in public makes you look silly.

The end got erased on my above post. I said, used to work at Crater Lake National Park as a tour guide. Occasionally someone would ask with great wonder, "Why is the water level EXACTLY THAT level. I would explain that it was the net of rainfall in and seepage out. But they would say, "but why exactly THAT level". I would explain why and that it could be only at one level and that is it given the rainfall and rock permeability. The answer of why you are you and not a sheep or grasshopper is that you were the product of two humans mating and not two sheep or grasshoppers. JD

[ManMachine]

... there's a condition in which the information from the inner ear, regarding balance, is defective or defectively relayed to the brain. Such people may have the continual experience that they are falling, even when they are lying on the ground... ])

Labrynthitis or Vestibular Neuritis.