Quantum consciousness...

[bennyboy]

Human beings subjected to extreme sensory deprivation report, in addition to many other things, a loss of self or conscious experience.  OFC, they also report all manner of conscious experience.  It;s almost as if the brain plays itself out for as long as it can (sometimes terrifyingly) and then, at some point, deprived of stimulus it throws in the towel. In that context, it doesn;t seem binary, more a gradual loss of fidelity ultimately terminating in an interuption.  Consider, again, what is reported upon leaving a dep chamber.  A sudden "reawakening" and rush of experience.  At least in this sense, I don't know if consciousness can be accurately described as being on or off.  Is it on or off when you sleep?  At what point, in sleep - as another example, do you go from dreaming to "blank"?

On an esoteric note, this degradation, loss, and resumption of conscious experience is precisely the aim of a great many ritual forms....down to simple reps like a traditional lakota sweat lodge...but it's also a part of recreational drug use(lol).

My interest is whether there is a non-arbitrary cut-line between consciousness and non-consciousness. In a way, it seems like consciousness with no content would be something like the sound of one hand clapping-- it's a nonsense idea. If so, and I think this may be your view, the content IS the consciousness. If so, that has definite philosophical implications-- in particular, that wherever certain kinds of processing happen, there must be consciousness.

As for remembering "what it's like" to be deep asleep, that's the $64,000 question and could answer many questions and settle many of our past points of debate about consciousness. We know enough about memory to know that memory involves that processing happens in a certain way-- if it doesn't, there's no memory of something, but that doesn't necessarily mean there was no consciousness. My grandmother, for example, remembers pretty much nothing, ever, because of senile dementia. But the rest of us can see that she's experiencing: I don't get the sense that she's a p-zombie.

I often have the sense, even when awoken out of very deep sleep, that there was "something" there, like a kind of colorless light or something, and that something is very intangible. Now, that could just be a superstitious vestige, or something to do with brain activity as I wake up. But my own sense is that there's definitely something there onto which ideas and sensations are "projected," and that this is much deeper than my ideas, my world view, etc. or even anything I associate with my sense of self.

[The Grand Nudger]

My interest is whether there is a non-arbitrary cut-line between consciousness and non-consciousness.  In a way, it seems like consciousness with no content would be something like the sound of one hand clapping-- it's a nonsense idea.  If so, and I think this may be your view, the content IS the consciousness.  If so, that has definite philosophical implications-- in particular, that wherever certain kinds of processing happen, there must be consciousness.

Personally, I don't think there is.  I suspect that there' a line between "consciousness as we possess it" -whatever that is- and the stuff that everything else does...but the -as we possess it- line is arbitrary, in a meaningful sense, even if it's meaningful in a descriptive or categorical sense.  

As for remembering "what it's like" to be deep asleep, that's the $64,000 question and could answer many questions and settle many of our past points of debate about consciousness.  We know enough about memory to know that memory involves that processing happens in a certain way-- if it doesn't, there's no memory of something, but that doesn't necessarily mean there was no consciousness.  My grandmother, for example, remembers pretty much nothing, ever, because of senile dementia.  But the rest of us can see that she's experiencing: I don't get the sense that she's a p-zombie.

Some maintain that we have no memory at all.  The author of Matthildas paper, for example.

I often have the sense, even when awoken out of very deep sleep, that there was "something" there, like a kind of colorless light or something, and that something is very intangible.  Now, that could just be a superstitious vestige, or something to do with brain activity as I wake up.  But my own sense is that there's definitely something there onto which ideas and sensations are "projected," and that this is much deeper than my ideas, my world view, etc. or even anything I associate with my sense of self.

I would agree. Obviously, I suspect that our minds are computational systems...but the thing that our mind arises from was something else long before it was that....and it never stopped being what it was, even if it does other stuff now.

[I_am_not_mafia]

With regard to whether consciousness is binary or not, remember that even with normal human beings who we all deem to be conscious, it's easy to see people acting in ways that they cannot easily explain. Whereas some people are far more conscious about why they act the way they do. After all this is primarily how therapy works. To make you see how previous experiences effect who you are now and the way you act.

Less developed animals will be influenced more by the stimuli that they sense directly.

[ignoramus]

My interest is whether there is a non-arbitrary cut-line between consciousness and non-consciousness.  In a way, it seems like consciousness with no content would be something like the sound of one hand clapping-- it's a nonsense idea.  If so, and I think this may be your view, the content IS the consciousness.  If so, that has definite philosophical implications-- in particular, that wherever certain kinds of processing happen, there must be consciousness.

Personally, I don't think there is.  I suspect that there' a line between "consciousness as we possess it" -whatever that is- and the stuff that everything else does...but the -as we possess it- line is arbitrary, in a meaningful sense, even if it's meaningful in a descriptive or categorical sense.  

As for remembering "what it's like" to be deep asleep, that's the $64,000 question and could answer many questions and settle many of our past points of debate about consciousness.  We know enough about memory to know that memory involves that processing happens in a certain way-- if it doesn't, there's no memory of something, but that doesn't necessarily mean there was no consciousness.  My grandmother, for example, remembers pretty much nothing, ever, because of senile dementia.  But the rest of us can see that she's experiencing: I don't get the sense that she's a p-zombie.

Some maintain that we have no memory at all.  The author of Matthildas paper, for example.

I often have the sense, even when awoken out of very deep sleep, that there was "something" there, like a kind of colorless light or something, and that something is very intangible.  Now, that could just be a superstitious vestige, or something to do with brain activity as I wake up.  But my own sense is that there's definitely something there onto which ideas and sensations are "projected," and that this is much deeper than my ideas, my world view, etc. or even anything I associate with my sense of self.

I would agree.  Obviously, I suspect that our minds are computational systems...but the thing that our mind arises from was something else long before it was that....and it never stopped being what it was, even if it does other stuff now.

I would hazard a guess and say that our minds were the *same* going back to before we were even human. We were completely conscious, intelligent and self aware then
just like a 4 year old is today. It's just added experiences which reshape our thinking and attitude as we get older. I'd say most animals are the same -for their respective level of brain complexity.

With regard to whether consciousness is binary or not, remember that even with normal human beings who we all deem to be conscious, it's easy to see people acting in ways that they cannot easily explain. Whereas some people are far more conscious about why they act the way they do. After all this is primarily how therapy works. To make you see how previous experiences effect who you are now and the way you act.

Less developed animals will be influenced more by the stimuli that they sense directly.

As above, I find it hard to see the switch as a binary one. Nothing in natural evolution has these discreet binary states at any stage. Why would our natural consciousness.
It's all a million shades of slow evolutionary grey.

[bennyboy]

As above, I find it hard to see the switch as a binary one. Nothing in natural evolution has these discreet binary states at any stage. Why would our natural consciousness.
It's all a million shades of slow evolutionary grey.

If it's not binary, then it must extend down into the quantum world. At all levels of organization, I can always ask a binary question: is there at least SOME consciousness here, or a total lack of it? For any collection of physical structures or processes, I can always ask that question, and the answer must be: yes, no, don't know. It is really only with superposition that instead of yes OR no, we can have yes AND no. As for "don't know," we'd have to decide what that means-- is it a semantic breakdown, some kind of impermeability of information a la uncertain principle, or what?

[The Grand Nudger]

"If it;s not binary it must be quantum"

Um, no?  Classic non-sequitur. In any case, if you're asking that question, and you want a binary answer...one thing you won't be able to escape is that the only places we have any indication of consciousness from, whatsoever, are far above the quantum level. We don;t see any indication of it in the microscopic, at the level of individal atoms..or of cells made of many atoms, or in simple multi-cellular life, or in complex organ and organelle based life -sans- a cns. Or, even, uniformly, in complex multicellular organ based life -with- a cns. It's not just a little bit above the quantum level that we have indications of consciousness, it;s far....far....faaaaaaaaaaar "above" it.

It's not, by any reckoning, that the various interactions and properties at each level "below" have no effect or aren;t in some way operative or fundamental to the end result - simply that the subject "x" -for whatever reason, does not manifest itself as a phenomena until -at least- a particular point in this hierarchy. Thus, to say that consciousness is ":quantum" or "atomic" or "a function of cells" or "of multicellular life", or of "systemic complexity", or even "of a central nervous system" are all true, but only trivially so.

This is why productive theories of consciousness explicitly reference specified complexities at a particular point in the hierachy and present in an individual representative.

[I_am_not_mafia]

As above, I find it hard to see the switch as a binary one. Nothing in natural evolution has these discreet binary states at any stage. Why would our natural consciousness.
It's all a million shades of slow evolutionary grey.

If it's not binary, then it must extend down into the quantum world.

No. It could extend down to a collection of interacting cells but no further.

What evidence is there to assume that the brain uses quantum effects?

[bennyboy]

"If it;s not binary it must be quantum"

Um, no?  Classic non-sequitur.  In any case, if you're asking that question, and you want a binary answer...one thing you won't be able to escape is that the only places we have any indication of consciousness from, whatsoever, are far above the quantum level.  We don;t see any indication of it in the microscopic, at the level of individal atoms..or of cells made of many atoms, or in simple multi-cellular life, or in complex organ and organelle based life -sans- a cns.  Or, even, uniformly, in complex multicellular organ based life -with- a cns.  It's not just a little bit above the quantum level that we have indications of consciousness, it;s far....far....faaaaaaaaaaar "above" it.

It's not, by any reckoning, that the various interactions and properties at each level "below" have no effect or aren;t in some way operative or fundamental to the end result - simply that the subject "x" -for whatever reason, does not manifest itself as a phenomena until -at least- a particular point in this hierarchy.  Thus, to say that consciousness is ":quantum" or "atomic" or "a function of cells" or "of multicellular life", or of "systemic complexity", or even "of a central nervous system" are all true, but only trivially so.

This is why productive theories of consciousness explicitly reference specified complexities at a particular point in the hierachy and present in an individual representative.

If consciousness is an emergent property, then there is a minimal physical system or process at which it emerges.  There is necessarily some level of organization at which there is consciousness, when at any other more primitive level, there could not be said to be consciousness.

If it is not an emergent property, then it is intrinsic to the Universe, or to something in it, not by any level of organization but right at the root.  That would be quantum mechanics, at least so far as we know now.

---

If it's not binary, then it must extend down into the quantum world.

No. It could extend down to a collection of interacting cells but no further.

What evidence is there to assume that the brain uses quantum effects?

I didn't say the brain "uses quantum effects," I think, although I'm willing to look at that issue-- certainly the OP video expressly discusses that, but I'm not sure I'd view it in that way.  So at least right now, I wouldn't pretend to be able to produce evidence of that.

Anyway, if consciousness extends down to a minimal system of organization-- say, an individual neuron which can input information from the environment and output a new pattern of information which is mapped to a simple tail's muscle fiber, then it's binary.  Either you DO have that level of organization in place, and have consciousness, or you DO NOT have that level of organization in place, and do not have consciousness.

[The Grand Nudger]

One might wonder, at that hypothetical minimum level of organization - what a hypothetical minimal incremental step "below" it looks like?  

In the binary proposition...some y is suddenly self aware in a meaningful way whereas the x directly before it is not.  This isn't what would be expected in a comp mind framework.  

In the quantum proposition....some y is suddenly self aware in a meaningful way whereas the x directly before it is not.  This isn't what would be expected in a quantum framework.

-Something is amiss.......

We could certainly categorize, in the vein of "it couldn't be said" that below some level x a human consciousness is not present. OFC, things "below" that level of organization do seem to be conscious. If we're looking to set a minimum binary level for consciousness itself...rather than some specific representative thereof, where would you suggest we place it? Would you place it at the level of a single nueron, for example? That - as a hypothetical, if we had some way to peirce the veil we would find consciousness in each and every neuron, and so anything with even one neuron - or any structure which achieved the same effect by any other means?

[Whateverist]

There.  Finished it.  Consciousness is more than computation.  Couldn't agree more.  

I actually agree with this. The brain does not function by computing. That's not to say that it cannot compute. We can do maths and you can even do mathematical computations using synaptic trees, but that's not why the brain functions that way it does.

I came across this article recently and it has been immensely refreshing to see someone else argue that we should not attempt to explain the brain as if it was a computer.

The empty brain
Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer

I argue that the brain is a biophysical, chemical self organising system, and like all other naturally occurring self organising systems it settles into a stable state by minimising disturbance of free-energy. So in the same way we won't get a useful understanding of consciousness if we see it merely as a form of computation. But it makes sense if we understand it as a way of helping the organism settle into a stable state over time.

We can understand both life and intelligence this way. Life is thermodynamically far from equilibrium, yet it self organised by minimising free energy. This is because an organism can produce more entropy over time by producing off-spring than by existing for a finite time and then dying off. In my last paper I demonstrated that a self organising agent that performs temporal sequence learning rather than a stimulus / response agent can choose costly actions that increase disturbance in the short term to settle into more stable states in the long term. In other words intelligence increases entropy over time even if it needs to minimise it in the short term.

Seen this way consciousness aids in increasing in entropy over time and is a natural result of the development of complexity through the arrow of time (e.g first there was radiation, then matter,  stars, chemistry, planets, biology, life, intelligence, consciousness, societies, economies etc)

Explaining it in terms of quantum mechanics has no explanatory power at all and is a homunculus argument in that it pushes the explanation away to an ever smaller scale in order to avoid trying to understand it.

---

Never know who you'll wind us in bed with th. Hope you u don't snore .. or at least not louder or ban me.