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Could you explain why only some of our neurons are part of our consciousness? If it's emergent then why does only part of our nervous system get to experience t

Could you explain why only some of our neurons are part of our consciousness? If it's emergent then why does only part of our nervous system get to experience the world, or is the other part also concious but we are not aware? There's a lot of tricky questions here that no one can really explain. I don't think the answer need be any "spookier" than any phenomenon that's unexplained - except maybe it's just surprising we've made so little progress at all.

skohan 5y ago
Which part of an internal combustion engine creates the forward motion of a car? Is it the fuel injector? The spark plugs? The pistons? Of course it's none of these things: the function of an engine is obviously a result of all of these parts of a complex system working together. It would be silly to claim that internal combustion is some intrinsic property of matter which exists at some level in the metal of the pistons, and maybe also in the doors of the car in a way we don't fully understand. Consciousness is observably a property of the brain. Consciousness can be predictably altered or removed by interfering with the chemical function at the synapse, or by inflicting physical trauma on brain tissue. Honestly I don't see what is so difficult to understand here.
- roberttod 5y ago
  Consciousness cannot be measured, the only concious being we can know for certain is ourself. It's not an observable property (or we haven't figured out how to observe it). You could remove the wheels from a car and observe the engine running and the axels turning but it wouldn't go forward. Do you see the difference to your analogy? Forward movement can be measured. And if you removed parts of the car you would eventually get down to the bare minimum required for forward movement because you could observe it. You cannot do this with conciousness.
  - skohan 5y ago
    Oh I'd say we have plenty of ways to measure and observe consciousness. We can measure brain activity during sleep and understand with some precision whether someone is dreaming or not, which is a state of consciousness. We can give someone a psychoactive drug, and ask them questions about how their consciousness has been altered. > Forward movement can be measured. And if you removed parts of the car you would eventually get down to the bare minimum required for forward movement because you could observe it. You cannot do this with consciousness. What makes you so confident of this? We actually have plenty of evidence in this direction with consciousness. We can observe that lesions in different parts of the brain have very predictable effects on consciousness. We can observe that psychedelics like LSD reduce sensory inputs to the thalamus, having very predictable effects on consciousness. Consciousness is obviously a process which responds to physical intervention, so why should we jump to the conclusion that it somehow exists outside the bounds of the physical world rather than assuming that it's just one of many physical phenomena we have yet to fully understand? To give an example, we cannot reliably predict the movement of the economy. We can understand some of the forces guiding it, we can try to understand it in terms of certain metric, and we can take some actions to get the results we want, but ultimately we can't point to any one thing and say: "this is the economy". It's an emergent property of a vastly dynamic interconnected system of billions of independent actors, and as a result we will probably never be able to fully pin it down. But we don't assume that the economy moves as the result of some magical force controlled by the gods, we rightly know it's just something out of our grasp.
    - roberttod 5y ago
      Interesting point about observing conciousness changes in ourselves - that does indeed give us some insight. Though I'm not sure we could use this tool for a lot of the answers, it doesn't seem terribly precise (and doesn't let us know much about concious states that cannot be achieved with human brains). > why should we jump to the conclusion that it somehow exists outside the bounds of the physical world rather than assuming that it's just one of many physical phenomena we have yet to fully understand? I don't believe the cause of conciousness is magic or supernatural, it'll surely be a physical phenomenon. Just not sure if it emerges via some phenomenon that we haven't discovered yet.
- acituan 5y ago
  > Which part of an internal combustion engine creates the forward motion of a car? Is it the fuel injector? The spark plugs? The pistons? Of course it's none of these things: the function of an engine is obviously a result of all of these parts of a complex system working together. You can't make the word "complex" do the heavily lifting here. There is a precise structural and functional organization of that matter that makes the engine. For the case of consciousness, you can't throw neurons and emergence together to explain away the precise structural and functional integration of those components that bring out consciousness. You have to have a continuity of explanation between the "list of parts" and the final thing. Otherwise someone else could have just gotten away with saying "an engine is an emergent phenomenon of atoms slapped together". If we're going to lack rigor, why not just stay at the lowest zoom level of explanation after all... > Consciousness is observably a property of the brain. Consciousness can be predictably altered or removed by interfering with the chemical function at the synapse, or by inflicting physical trauma on brain tissue. Honestly I don't see what is so difficult to understand here. So a live brain in a vat would have consciousness? If not, what are the minimal components of the body you have to add before you can observe consciousness? Cartesian entrapment of consciousness “upstairs” is actually younger than embodied models, and none are as simple as you make it.
  - skohan 5y ago
    > you can't throw neurons and emergence together to explain away the precise structural and functional integration of those components that bring out consciousness. > You have to have a continuity of explanation between the "list of parts" and the final thing. That's exactly the argument I am making. I believe the most plausible explanation is that there is a precise structural and functional integration located in the brain which gives rise to consciousness. It's many many orders of magnitude more complex than an engine, we don't understand all the details and maybe we never will, but even based on the current understanding of neurobiology there is no reason to believe we have to look elsewhere for an explanation. > So a live brain in a vat would have consciousness? If not, what are the minimal components of the body you have to add before you can observe consciousness? There are psychoactive drugs which can effectively dampen sensory inputs to the brain, which is similar to your "brain in a vat" case, and people who have used them self-report having subjective experience while they were under.
Koshkin 5y ago
> why only some of our neurons are part of our consciousness Specialization. The same reason a why during ontogenesis some cells became neurons in the first place while other ones, something else.
- roberttod 5y ago
  What is the property that makes those cells not concious? As you explain, there is some sort of difference there but it's not clear how that works.
  - skohan 5y ago
    > What is the property that makes those cells not concious? The only kind of evidence we have that anything is conscious is self reporting from other humans. For many vertebrates it seems plausible they have some level of consciousness based on observed behavior, but we don't really know. I'd say the burden of proof lays squarely on the side of proving that anything besides an advanced CNS is involved in consciousness. I see no reason anyone should have to disprove the existence of consciousness anywhere outside of a fairly advanced brain.
    - roberttod 5y ago
      I agree with most of this. > I see no reason anyone should have to disprove the existence of consciousness anywhere outside of a fairly advanced brain. There's a fairly big moral reason. Unless we can know what is concious and what is not, it's only right to be on the safe side and treat all organisms as if they are concious. How advanced should the CNS be before there's an obligation to not cause pain for an organism? (should we care about chickens in cages?)
      - skohan 5y ago
        I guess I would see this differently: it's fairly hard to prove a chicken is conscious, but it's fairly easy to prove that they can feel pain. I don't think you need consciousness to advocate against cruelty to animals.

skohan 5y ago

Which part of an internal combustion engine creates the forward motion of a car? Is it the fuel injector? The spark plugs? The pistons? Of course it's none of these things: the function of an engine is obviously a result of all of these parts of a complex system working together. It would be silly to claim that internal combustion is some intrinsic property of matter which exists at some level in the metal of the pistons, and maybe also in the doors of the car in a way we don't fully understand. Consciousness is observably a property of the brain. Consciousness can be predictably altered or removed by interfering with the chemical function at the synapse, or by inflicting physical trauma on brain tissue. Honestly I don't see what is so difficult to understand here.

roberttod 5y ago
Consciousness cannot be measured, the only concious being we can know for certain is ourself. It's not an observable property (or we haven't figured out how to observe it). You could remove the wheels from a car and observe the engine running and the axels turning but it wouldn't go forward. Do you see the difference to your analogy? Forward movement can be measured. And if you removed parts of the car you would eventually get down to the bare minimum required for forward movement because you could observe it. You cannot do this with conciousness.
- skohan 5y ago
  Oh I'd say we have plenty of ways to measure and observe consciousness. We can measure brain activity during sleep and understand with some precision whether someone is dreaming or not, which is a state of consciousness. We can give someone a psychoactive drug, and ask them questions about how their consciousness has been altered. > Forward movement can be measured. And if you removed parts of the car you would eventually get down to the bare minimum required for forward movement because you could observe it. You cannot do this with consciousness. What makes you so confident of this? We actually have plenty of evidence in this direction with consciousness. We can observe that lesions in different parts of the brain have very predictable effects on consciousness. We can observe that psychedelics like LSD reduce sensory inputs to the thalamus, having very predictable effects on consciousness. Consciousness is obviously a process which responds to physical intervention, so why should we jump to the conclusion that it somehow exists outside the bounds of the physical world rather than assuming that it's just one of many physical phenomena we have yet to fully understand? To give an example, we cannot reliably predict the movement of the economy. We can understand some of the forces guiding it, we can try to understand it in terms of certain metric, and we can take some actions to get the results we want, but ultimately we can't point to any one thing and say: "this is the economy". It's an emergent property of a vastly dynamic interconnected system of billions of independent actors, and as a result we will probably never be able to fully pin it down. But we don't assume that the economy moves as the result of some magical force controlled by the gods, we rightly know it's just something out of our grasp.
  - roberttod 5y ago
    Interesting point about observing conciousness changes in ourselves - that does indeed give us some insight. Though I'm not sure we could use this tool for a lot of the answers, it doesn't seem terribly precise (and doesn't let us know much about concious states that cannot be achieved with human brains). > why should we jump to the conclusion that it somehow exists outside the bounds of the physical world rather than assuming that it's just one of many physical phenomena we have yet to fully understand? I don't believe the cause of conciousness is magic or supernatural, it'll surely be a physical phenomenon. Just not sure if it emerges via some phenomenon that we haven't discovered yet.
acituan 5y ago
> Which part of an internal combustion engine creates the forward motion of a car? Is it the fuel injector? The spark plugs? The pistons? Of course it's none of these things: the function of an engine is obviously a result of all of these parts of a complex system working together. You can't make the word "complex" do the heavily lifting here. There is a precise structural and functional organization of that matter that makes the engine. For the case of consciousness, you can't throw neurons and emergence together to explain away the precise structural and functional integration of those components that bring out consciousness. You have to have a continuity of explanation between the "list of parts" and the final thing. Otherwise someone else could have just gotten away with saying "an engine is an emergent phenomenon of atoms slapped together". If we're going to lack rigor, why not just stay at the lowest zoom level of explanation after all... > Consciousness is observably a property of the brain. Consciousness can be predictably altered or removed by interfering with the chemical function at the synapse, or by inflicting physical trauma on brain tissue. Honestly I don't see what is so difficult to understand here. So a live brain in a vat would have consciousness? If not, what are the minimal components of the body you have to add before you can observe consciousness? Cartesian entrapment of consciousness “upstairs” is actually younger than embodied models, and none are as simple as you make it.
- skohan 5y ago
  > you can't throw neurons and emergence together to explain away the precise structural and functional integration of those components that bring out consciousness. > You have to have a continuity of explanation between the "list of parts" and the final thing. That's exactly the argument I am making. I believe the most plausible explanation is that there is a precise structural and functional integration located in the brain which gives rise to consciousness. It's many many orders of magnitude more complex than an engine, we don't understand all the details and maybe we never will, but even based on the current understanding of neurobiology there is no reason to believe we have to look elsewhere for an explanation. > So a live brain in a vat would have consciousness? If not, what are the minimal components of the body you have to add before you can observe consciousness? There are psychoactive drugs which can effectively dampen sensory inputs to the brain, which is similar to your "brain in a vat" case, and people who have used them self-report having subjective experience while they were under.

Koshkin 5y ago

> why only some of our neurons are part of our consciousness Specialization. The same reason a why during ontogenesis some cells became neurons in the first place while other ones, something else.

roberttod 5y ago
What is the property that makes those cells not concious? As you explain, there is some sort of difference there but it's not clear how that works.
- skohan 5y ago
  > What is the property that makes those cells not concious? The only kind of evidence we have that anything is conscious is self reporting from other humans. For many vertebrates it seems plausible they have some level of consciousness based on observed behavior, but we don't really know. I'd say the burden of proof lays squarely on the side of proving that anything besides an advanced CNS is involved in consciousness. I see no reason anyone should have to disprove the existence of consciousness anywhere outside of a fairly advanced brain.
  - roberttod 5y ago
    I agree with most of this. > I see no reason anyone should have to disprove the existence of consciousness anywhere outside of a fairly advanced brain. There's a fairly big moral reason. Unless we can know what is concious and what is not, it's only right to be on the safe side and treat all organisms as if they are concious. How advanced should the CNS be before there's an obligation to not cause pain for an organism? (should we care about chickens in cages?)
    - skohan 5y ago
      I guess I would see this differently: it's fairly hard to prove a chicken is conscious, but it's fairly easy to prove that they can feel pain. I don't think you need consciousness to advocate against cruelty to animals.