14 ms·
What insects can tell us about the origins of consciousness (2016)
- vxxzy 8y agoIs this really saying that consciousness is an efficient solution to basic problems of sensory reafference? Does this mean it is the base from which consciousness arrives or is it merely an attribute of consciousness?
- sven773 8y agoKarl Friston's free energy principle says something similar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIu_dJGyIQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIu_dJGyIQI
- bencollier49 8y ago"In vertebrates the capacity for subjective experience is supported by integrated structures in the midbrain that create a neural simulation of the state of the mobile animal in space." Whoah there! I think this might be another case of semantic creep. It's very easy to conflate consciousness with self-image in the brain, and it's regularly mis-sold in this way by neuroscientists. I once went to a talk at the Royal Society which was supposed to be about consciousness. The bloke just spoke for an hour about things like optical illusions. By the same token, if I were to create a processing system for a robot which integrated visual, haptic and auditory feedback to create a representation of the robot in space, we're being asked to credit the robot as somehow being conscious.
- amelius 8y agoYes, before we solve consciousness, we first need to get the nomenclature right.
- bencollier49 8y agoTo be fair, as soon as we go near anything really subjective, the nomenclature seems to fall apart across most disciplines. For obvious reasons, I suppose. For example, the term "Nous": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nous
- TelmoMenezes 8y agoI would argue that consciousness is the least subjective phenomenon there is. I think that the difficulty in defining it comes for the fact that good definitions are so fundamentally simple that people miss their depth. My favorite one is this, and please give it a chance before rejecting it. See if it distinguishes consciousness from all other concepts: Consciousness is that which cannot be doubted.
- tylerjwilk00 8y agoI disagree. The problem is that we are convinced that any experience or object can be defined within language. The truth is that somethings are undefinable. And as soon as you attempt to define it, label it, you have already lost it.
- rrdcfff 8y agoI agree with that. But the conclusion is very interesting. If something cannot be expessed within a language, it also cannot be described used any formal system, or mathematics in general. Which should be very distrurbing to modern naturalists, to whom (to the first approximation) everything is just clouds of particles (whose behavior can be described using mathematics).
- bencollier49 8y agoThat's a great definition. I think we can all objectively agree on that definition, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the thing being described by the definition is any less subjective.
- 8y ago
- TuringTest 8y ago> we're being asked to credit the robot as somehow being conscious How do you differentiate a robot from a philosophical zombie, and this one from a human? We can not be sure that other humans apart from myself (yours truly writing these lines); we only make estimated guesses that, because we share the same physical structures, our experience will also be similar. Therefore, we could as well extend that presumption to a being sharing structures with similar functions. It may be the case that insect structures are too simple for that (maybe, as you point out, it requires complex coordination among subsystems and not just a spacial model), but at least it provides a lower bound.
- TelmoMenezes 8y ago> Therefore, we could as well extend that presumption to a being sharing structures with similar functions. This is more or less the current mainstream stance. I think it's fine to do it for practical purposes, for example deciding that animals cannot be ethically subjected to certain treatments by virtue of the complexity of their nervous systems. But this is reasonable doubt + principle of precaution. I'm fine with that. What we cannot do is make this presumption and pretend that we are still within the realms of serious science or philosophy. The technical name for this presumption is emergentism, that consciousness somehow arises from the interactions of matter. I believe that the reason why this hypothesis is so popular, and even confused with scientific fact, is that it is the less weird. Avoiding weirdness is a common pitfall in the history of science, it leads to temporary dead-ends.
- hopler 8y agoIt's fine to say that science does not support the claim that animals have consciousness, as long as you also agree that science does not support the claim that humans have consciousness. I don't understand what you are saying about emrgentism being non scientific. Emergentism is the reason the reason that the Universe today has so many properties that it didn't have when it was a miasma of isolated hydrogren or whatever around the time of the Big Bang.
- 8y ago
- chr1 8y agoWhy do you think that consciousness is different from a self image in a neural network which is configured to use some effective learning algorithm? Of course there are other theories but they are just as unproven as this one.
- naasking 8y ago> I once went to a talk at the Royal Society which was supposed to be about consciousness. The bloke just spoke for an hour about things like optical illusions. Perhaps he was trying to convey that apparent subjective experience is an analogous perceptual illusion. > By the same token, if I were to create a processing system for a robot which integrated visual, haptic and auditory feedback to create a representation of the robot in space, we're being asked to credit the robot as somehow being conscious. Perhaps it depends on what you mean by "integrated". Consciousness must serve a functional, adaptive purpose, and if your integration does not perform the same function, then it wouldn't be conscious as we understand it.
- goatlover 8y ago> Consciousness must serve a functional, adaptive purpose, Why? Not all of evolution is adaptive. It's also possible that consciousness is something more fundamental that strongly emerges when the right sort of physical activity takes place. On Chalmers view, it's rich information processing that results in consciousness. Evolution would only provide the means for how that information processing came about in animals. But it could also came about because of Boltzman Brain randomly popped into existence or human design.
- simonh 8y agoI'm not really clear what Chalmers means by 'rich information processing' though, and yes I have read some of his stuff and IMHO he doesn't seem to either. He's super smart and well worth reading, but I happen to disagree on this. >It's also possible that consciousness is something more fundamental that strongly emerges when the right sort of physical activity takes place Since brains seem to be physical and are conscious, yes they seem to be performing the right sort of activity but that's pretty much tautological. At least the idea that self image and self awareness are key is a concrete theory that we have a chance of testing. Maybe it's a sort of self-modeling feedback loop. Our brains model our physical bodies, mental state and the mental state of others. At some point, this modeling becomes sophisticated enough to become recursive. The model includes cruder approximations of those models, etc like being between two mirrors facing each other. The symbolic representations expand beyond our ability to perceive them. We become aware of our awareness. Bang! You're conscious.
- coldtea 8y ago>Whoah there! I think this might be another case of semantic creep. It's very easy to conflate consciousness with self-image in the brain But it's very hard to say why consciousness shouldn't be conflated with self-image in the brain!
- mjburgess 8y agoA conscious agent believes, desires, wants, feels, etc. A "self-image" is more-or-less just proprioception, and it seems very easy to ditch that and still be conscious.
- acqq 8y ago> A conscious agent believes, desires, wants, feels, etc. Then, when I just observe how an ant behaves, I can definitely see that he "believes, desires, wants, feels etc." He sees and/or smells the crumb that I've made while eating a sandwich. He "desires" and "wants" it, runs to it. He "believes" it can lift it and "feels" it can do it. He tries, more than once. Then he has to adjust his belief: the crumb is too heavy. So he gives up trying to lift, now he "believes" he should bite a peace of it. And he does that. Then, he has a new "desire" to carry the bitten-off peace back to the "house" in the hole where other ants are. And he "feels" he can do this, and he will eventually do this. If another ant tries to take the crumb he carries, he will "feel" hat he "has to fight" but he can also "decide" it's "not too interesting" and it's "better to search for another crumb." Now tell me how is that behavior different from a person which is unable to speak, and where you would describe it with "beliefs, desires etc."
- simmanian 8y agoWhat is consciousness without the concept of self, though? "I think, therefore I am" is the basis of how we view human existence, and there is no reason to not think that the concept of self is just another illusion created by our pattern recognizing brain.
- porpoisely 8y agoConsciousness without the concept of self is general consciousness. Like animals or infants. A consciousness that can experience and react to the environment, but has no idea of itself. Consciousness with the concept of self is self-awareness. It's a more "advanced" form of consciousness. Where the consciousness is aware that it is conscious. I might be wrong, but that's how I understand it. As for the self being an illusion, we don't know for sure, but I think that's the most likely case.
- mrfusion 8y agoThe map is not the territory.
- modzu 8y agoto be fair, the claim is, "supported by...". this is not the same as equality.
- chaosfox 8y agosee also: "Insects cannot tell us anything about subjective experience or the origin of consciousness" https://www.pnas.org/content/113/27/E3813 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/27/E3813
- amelius 8y agoThe title of that note is, of course, possibly not correct. > Thus, they fail to make a convincing case that insects can tell us anything about subjective experience or consciousness. This is not the same as "Insects cannot tell us anything about subjective experience or the origin of consciousness"
- mfoy_ 8y agoRight, the title makes a claim, and their conclusion is that the opposite claim has failed to meet its burden of proof... Thinking that "because something has not met its burden of proof means that the opposite must be true" is a fallacy.
- DocSavage 8y agoAnd the original authors' rebuttal to that and other work: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/27/E3814 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/27/E3814
- saagarjha 8y ago> The brain structures that support subjective experience in vertebrates and insects are very different from each other, but in both cases they are basal to each clade. Hence we propose the origins of subjective experience can be traced to the Cambrian. Insects are thought to have arisen in the Devonian period, did they not?
- blacksqr 8y ago"Frankly, I find the idea of a bug that thinks offensive!"
- viivaux 8y ago>However, consciousness also gives out somewhere. Plants do not have it. Stopped reading there.
- alanbernstein 8y agoYou think they do? Or just that it's an unreasonably certain assertion? Is there a dividing line? If not plants/animals, then where?
- viivaux 8y agoIf anyone proved beyond doubt that plants are not conscious & don't make decisions, I sure didn't hear about it. I have little doubt there are many flavors of consciousness out there, and while humans and animals and plants have their differences, they are not as large as some assume. What I believe is this: We don't know nearly enough about consciousness, how it's made, and what it is, to make statements like that. And when people make the mistake of assuming they know otherwise, anything that follows is likely a pile of ballsack. I suspect the dividing line, if we assume there is a single one, is pretty fuzzy and subjective. If a tree is cut down, is it still a tree? What about when it's cut into planks? At what point does an acorn become a tree; at it's first leaf, first sprout, first branch? If we had answers to these kind of questions, the world would be very different to what I've observed.
- alanbernstein 8y agoI can't argue with any of that, and of course these things are all fuzzy. But if plants have anything resembling consciousness, it seems to be so different than what we experience, as to be worth distinguishing.
- BoiledCabbage 8y ago> But if plants have anything resembling consciousness, it seems to be so different than what we experience, as to be worth distinguishing Why? They're alive, and their lives are drastically different from ours, but we don't need to distinguish it and use a separate term for term. Unless we know what consciousness is we can't define what has it.
- hopler 8y agoSimilar article thoroughly discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11849621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11849621
- cobbzilla 8y agoIt seems like the assertion (very roughly) is something like: a creature is conscious if it can make a subjective decision about something. It's not a terrible definition, but I feel like I'm missing some nuance.
- ZeroFries 8y ago> How, why, and when consciousness evolved remain hotly debated topics Conversely, consider whether or not consciousness as a feature of the world actually evolved at all. That is, consciousness could be an inherent part of reality throughout all of reality. See various versions of panpsychism or idealism. The idea is that energy itself is conscious, and what evolves is the shape or form consciousness takes. There is no place in space-time one can point to and say "this is where the lights came on". To answer the question of "why" is the same as answering the question "why something rather than nothing?" It's not clear whether a semantic or symbolic expression (which is itself a part of consciousness) can satisfactorily answer it (that is, explain the whole).
- m3kw9 8y agoMaybe look no further to when human babies become conscious, their first moments that they remember can say a lot about what consciousness is. Having memory is a big part of consciousness.