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> 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

> 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.
- acituan 5y ago
  > 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. Without sufficiently explicating what that structure may be and how it interfaces with the purported non conscious parts of the body, it is too big of a leap to claim that a locale that is not even the whole brain is essential to consciousness. Regarding the psychoactive compounds, I am not convinced it gives the evidence you think it does. There are way too many confounds, and I don’t think dampening creates the brain in a vat condition anyway. There are plenty of counter examples though, if you’re interested check out embodied cognition. There are cool experiments like people’s cognitive skills diminishing when they are prevented from making hand gestures.
  - skohan 5y ago
    I never made a concrete claim that consciousness is located in a specific brain region. I speculated that, but the truth is we don't know if it's one sub-region which represents consciousness, or a combination of many. As for "how it interfaces with the purported non conscious parts of the body", this part is incredibly obvious. Afferent nerves take information from sensory receptors into the brain, and efferent neurons transport motor signals from the brain to the muscles. There's no mystery at all about the interface: if consciousness is a product of some sub-region of the brain, the interface is the set of synapses carrying information into and out of that region. > it is too big of a leap to claim that a locale that is not even the whole brain is essential to consciousness. I would argue the evidence is incredibly strong that consciousness is localized at least within the brain, if not within a more specialized subset of the brain. Basically every intervention we know about which is capable of having a profound effect on consciousness has to act on the brain. You can amputate an arm or a leg, and consciousness remains intact. However psychoactive drugs interfering with normal activity at the synapse, and trauma to the tissue of the brain causes reliable and repeatable effects on consciousness. If consciousness is indeed a property which originates outside the brain as well, why is it that we can only affect it by taking physical action at the brain itself? As for the argument that it's not "the whole brain", there's a lot of evidence for that as well. For instance, people with various forms of brain damage can lose certain functions without losing consciousness. For instance, people with lesions in the primary visual cortex may not be able to see, but they surely retain their consciousness and subjective experience. > ...embodied cognition. There are cool experiments like people’s cognitive skills diminishing when they are prevented from making hand gestures. This one is very easy to explain and there's no revelation there. Basically all of psychology research has shown that if you divide someone's attention, they perform worse on cognitive tasks. If you artificially require someone to restrict their hand movement, they must spend some of their cognitive capacity thinking about their hands, so they're going to do worse at everything else relative to baseline. If this didn't happen, it would be extremely shocking.

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.

acituan 5y ago
> 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. Without sufficiently explicating what that structure may be and how it interfaces with the purported non conscious parts of the body, it is too big of a leap to claim that a locale that is not even the whole brain is essential to consciousness. Regarding the psychoactive compounds, I am not convinced it gives the evidence you think it does. There are way too many confounds, and I don’t think dampening creates the brain in a vat condition anyway. There are plenty of counter examples though, if you’re interested check out embodied cognition. There are cool experiments like people’s cognitive skills diminishing when they are prevented from making hand gestures.
- skohan 5y ago
  I never made a concrete claim that consciousness is located in a specific brain region. I speculated that, but the truth is we don't know if it's one sub-region which represents consciousness, or a combination of many. As for "how it interfaces with the purported non conscious parts of the body", this part is incredibly obvious. Afferent nerves take information from sensory receptors into the brain, and efferent neurons transport motor signals from the brain to the muscles. There's no mystery at all about the interface: if consciousness is a product of some sub-region of the brain, the interface is the set of synapses carrying information into and out of that region. > it is too big of a leap to claim that a locale that is not even the whole brain is essential to consciousness. I would argue the evidence is incredibly strong that consciousness is localized at least within the brain, if not within a more specialized subset of the brain. Basically every intervention we know about which is capable of having a profound effect on consciousness has to act on the brain. You can amputate an arm or a leg, and consciousness remains intact. However psychoactive drugs interfering with normal activity at the synapse, and trauma to the tissue of the brain causes reliable and repeatable effects on consciousness. If consciousness is indeed a property which originates outside the brain as well, why is it that we can only affect it by taking physical action at the brain itself? As for the argument that it's not "the whole brain", there's a lot of evidence for that as well. For instance, people with various forms of brain damage can lose certain functions without losing consciousness. For instance, people with lesions in the primary visual cortex may not be able to see, but they surely retain their consciousness and subjective experience. > ...embodied cognition. There are cool experiments like people’s cognitive skills diminishing when they are prevented from making hand gestures. This one is very easy to explain and there's no revelation there. Basically all of psychology research has shown that if you divide someone's attention, they perform worse on cognitive tasks. If you artificially require someone to restrict their hand movement, they must spend some of their cognitive capacity thinking about their hands, so they're going to do worse at everything else relative to baseline. If this didn't happen, it would be extremely shocking.