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There are some who reduce consciousness down to simple response to stimulus. DD Hoffman has defined a simple 'conscious agent' as a system with an input such as

by simonh 4y ago

There are some who reduce consciousness down to simple response to stimulus. DD Hoffman has defined a simple 'conscious agent' as a system with an input such as a switch and a counter for how many times it's been stimulated, as a simples elementary conscious system. For me that's basically saying conscious beings are information processing systems, therefore all information processing systems are conscious. Panpsychism does the same thing, but it's just like saying a tank is a vehicle, therefore all vehicles are tanks. For me, consciousness is more than just perception, it's more like the awareness of your own thought processes. It's understanding and being aware that you are a conscious being. That's not a novel view, there are dictionary definitions that are consistent with this. [Dictionary.com] Consciousness - the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world. Hoffman's conscious agents clearly don't qualify IMHO, and I'm pretty confident insects don't either. I'm less sure about some mammals like cats and dogs. It does seem like some animals, including some birds, do have a sense of self even if it's fairly rudimentary.

elmomle 4y ago
OED: "The state or fact of being mentally conscious or aware of anything" ( (https://www.oed.com/oed2/00047729 https://www.oed.com/oed2/00047729, #3). This jives more with my intuition that a toddler is conscious, even if they aren't really aware of themselves as a perceiving entity (aside, I wonder if such self-awareness is even binary or more continuous). And given this framing, it's very reasonable to ask whether insects may be conscious.
- simonh 4y ago
  As always the root of most disagreement is actually not disagreement about the issue itself but the terms we’re using to discuss it. I think we have a word for your definition and it’s awareness. Perception might also do. If we say consciousness is the same also, then we have a pileup of three words all for basically the same thing, and no word for the strong sense of self awareness and internal reflection I prefer. I would be absolutely fine accepting your definition of consciousness, as long as we have a clear widely accepted unambiguous term specifically for awareness of your own mental state and thought processes. IMHO we need a term for that, and that’s actually the interesting subject. I think toddlers are conscious in the strong sense I prefer, based on my discussions with my own children when they were toddlers, as I was interested in this question at the time.
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jibe#note-1 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jibe#note-1
akomtu 4y ago
There are also some who confuse consciousness with intelligence. The word consciousness isn't even defined in the western culture: people see it as a some woo that makes them different from a chair. In sanskrit, the word consciousness means just perception; "consciousness arises from interaction with matter". The definition from dictionary.com is a mishup of related things: consciousness somehow turned into awareness, then into self-awareness and then even gained rudimentary mind. That's a whole evolution in one definition.
Maursault 4y ago
> For me, consciousness is more than just perception, it's more like the awareness of your own thought processes. That is self-awareness, big difference. Consciousness is required for self-awareness, but you are placing the bar too high for consciousness. Anything that has brain (in any form) that experiences and can feel pain is conscious, whether it is self-aware or not. A 1yo baby is not self-aware, but I'm pretty sure it is still conscious. It is a pretty good bet that all animals are conscious to some extent, including insects. It isn't a terrible bet that even plants have their own plant-consiousness, fungus has its own fungus-consciousness, etc.
- simonh 4y ago
  If it's merely the ability to perceive and react to the environment then a Tesla is conscious. I'm just concerned that it's a very heavily loaded term that implies a lot of things that perception or awareness don't to the same degree. Philosophy programs, youtube channels and magazines don't do special episodes on the "problem of perception" because nobody would care (well in specialist journals maybe), but they do on consciousness. The only thing that makes discussions of consciousness interesting is the ambiguity in meaning, and the fact that some of it's meanings include self-awareness. It seems to me that those like Hoffman promoting a simplistic perception model and calling it consciousness is a kind of sleight of hand to make it seem cooler and more profound than it actually is.

by simonh 4y ago

elmomle 4y ago

OED: "The state or fact of being mentally conscious or aware of anything" ( (https://www.oed.com/oed2/00047729 https://www.oed.com/oed2/00047729, #3). This jives more with my intuition that a toddler is conscious, even if they aren't really aware of themselves as a perceiving entity (aside, I wonder if such self-awareness is even binary or more continuous). And given this framing, it's very reasonable to ask whether insects may be conscious.

simonh 4y ago
As always the root of most disagreement is actually not disagreement about the issue itself but the terms we’re using to discuss it. I think we have a word for your definition and it’s awareness. Perception might also do. If we say consciousness is the same also, then we have a pileup of three words all for basically the same thing, and no word for the strong sense of self awareness and internal reflection I prefer. I would be absolutely fine accepting your definition of consciousness, as long as we have a clear widely accepted unambiguous term specifically for awareness of your own mental state and thought processes. IMHO we need a term for that, and that’s actually the interesting subject. I think toddlers are conscious in the strong sense I prefer, based on my discussions with my own children when they were toddlers, as I was interested in this question at the time.
andrewmcwatters 4y ago
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jibe#note-1 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jibe#note-1

akomtu 4y ago

There are also some who confuse consciousness with intelligence. The word consciousness isn't even defined in the western culture: people see it as a some woo that makes them different from a chair. In sanskrit, the word consciousness means just perception; "consciousness arises from interaction with matter". The definition from dictionary.com is a mishup of related things: consciousness somehow turned into awareness, then into self-awareness and then even gained rudimentary mind. That's a whole evolution in one definition.

Maursault 4y ago

> For me, consciousness is more than just perception, it's more like the awareness of your own thought processes. That is self-awareness, big difference. Consciousness is required for self-awareness, but you are placing the bar too high for consciousness. Anything that has brain (in any form) that experiences and can feel pain is conscious, whether it is self-aware or not. A 1yo baby is not self-aware, but I'm pretty sure it is still conscious. It is a pretty good bet that all animals are conscious to some extent, including insects. It isn't a terrible bet that even plants have their own plant-consiousness, fungus has its own fungus-consciousness, etc.

simonh 4y ago
If it's merely the ability to perceive and react to the environment then a Tesla is conscious. I'm just concerned that it's a very heavily loaded term that implies a lot of things that perception or awareness don't to the same degree. Philosophy programs, youtube channels and magazines don't do special episodes on the "problem of perception" because nobody would care (well in specialist journals maybe), but they do on consciousness. The only thing that makes discussions of consciousness interesting is the ambiguity in meaning, and the fact that some of it's meanings include self-awareness. It seems to me that those like Hoffman promoting a simplistic perception model and calling it consciousness is a kind of sleight of hand to make it seem cooler and more profound than it actually is.