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if consciousness were anything but what the brain does, how would you know? we don't really have a means to check for consciousness other than asking someone. t
by modzu 8y ago
if consciousness were anything but what the brain does, how would you know? we don't really have a means to check for consciousness other than asking someone. that's pretty weak!
because there isn't a consciousness test, philosophers are trying to point the science in the right direction, in terms of what are legitimate possibilities or what theories may not be sufficient explanations. in other words, they are grappling with the very question you asked, ie, "show how information gets transferred back and forth...".
- skybrian 8y agoThere is no specific test, but the phenomenon to explain is conscious behavior. People do things and we explain some of them by saying they're conscious. If someday we can explain how people sense what's going on around them, learn things, and decide what to do (including any reflective thinking that might involve), there will be little mystery left. I suppose there are alternative definitions but if they're not focused on somehow explaining peoples' behavior I don't think they're much use.
- Svettie 8y agoI disagree, I think we can strip out a lot of stuff that goes into conscious behavior like how all the various sensory systems work, how learning works, etc. If that's what you're looking for there isn't anything weird really, and we have growing models and analogs for a lot of these sub-processes that go into it. Once you get past that, you'll still be left with weirdness: even if we fully understand how vision works, how is it that my brain is continuously rendering what is essentially a fully 3d high-res spherical monitor all around me, and I find myself in the center of it? How does all of this become one cohesive experience, and who is experiencing it?
- modzu 8y agothat's behaviorism (not the same thing as experience) and as a theory was refuted in the 50s by chomsky: https://chomsky.info/1967____/ https://chomsky.info/1967____/
- skybrian 8y agoNo, it's not the same. Behaviorism claimed that internal states like thoughts and feelings don't really exist. I'm saying that whatever they are, they must cause the external behaviors we associate with consciousness. (And furthermore, the theory must explain things like the effects of brain damage, surgery, the effects of drugs, hormones, how children's minds develop, evolution, and so on.) These are just the requirements for any scientific model of how minds work.
- modzu 8y agoah ok, yes i agree
- modzu 8y agomaybe another way to challenge your perspective is to think of a robot: in the case of a robot, you can explain how it senses whats going on around it, learns things, and takes actions. but is the robot conscious? is it ok to kill it? think about why it might be ok to kill the robot and not a person. because the difference between them is that the person feels; the person is conscious. it is the consciousness (what's left after all the other explanations) that is precisely the mystery that we seek to explain but have no idea how to do scientifically. that puts it into the domain of philosophy, but that doesn't mean it's not "much use". it's not much use yet, it will be some day. most of what we consider science now began in the past as philosophy. astronomy, physics, medicine, etc..
- skybrian 8y agoUnderstanding how minds work won't answer ethical questions, but I do think it would help us better understand what our choices are: where are some ways we could plausibly draw the line when making rules? Or maybe there is no natural way to do it and it will just muddy the issue further? That would be interesting to know too.