5 ms·

What I find amusing is the phrase "nothing more than electrical signals". As if electrical signals were somehow trivial to understand. As if one individual neur

What I find amusing is the phrase "nothing more than electrical signals". As if electrical signals were somehow trivial to understand. As if one individual neuron didn't embody so much chemistry and physics and history (it's got your entire genome stored inside!) and complex behaviors (it's a tiny little creature!) that we can't even understand it in isolation. I'm not sure whether to recommend Dennett's Consciousness Explained or to compel the questioner to work through The Molecular Biology of the Cell, followed by (e.g.) Hölldobler and Wilson's Journey to the Ants -- and then keep going -- before trying to dismiss the complexity of a network of neurons with the wave of one hand.

yan 18y ago
I find that some people (hooray weasel words) are so driven to find that something special that can put humans in a completely different realm from other things and animals that they won't accept that the same processes that run us also run most other living things, just more progressed. I don't know why people need a clear, binary difference of what makes one "human" to appreciate how beautiful life and the mind is. Am I in the minority that has no problems with being categorizes as a mammal, just more progressed, not different altogether?
- maxwell 18y ago
  Chimpanzees have actually genetically progressed more than us since divergence. http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5808 http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5808
  - byrneseyeview 18y ago
    "Progressed" is not the right word. They changed more to adapt to their environment. Or, at least, they changed more genetically.
- lg 18y ago
  Actually, philosophers who think that there's something special about consciousness (i.e. it can't be explained by structure and dynamics, but might be due to another fundamental physical property that the scientific community has so far ignored) don't think that only humans are conscious. David Chalmers once described how thermostats might have a dim form of it, although he just mentioned it as an unlikely possibility.
  - graemep 18y ago
    So do some physicists: http://chaos.swarthmore.edu/courses/phys6_2004/QM/19_CatsFriends.pdf http://chaos.swarthmore.edu/courses/phys6_2004/QM/19_CatsFri... The problem is a lack of tools to explore this further. Where are the testable predictions? The question also makes one mistake: the first neuron fires long before birth. Develop meant is a gradual process, so the emergence of consciousness probably is too.
    - lg 18y ago
      Well I don't believe that you need to posit a fundamental consciousness-property to explain collapse. There are clearer explanations that rely only on what physicists (mostly) already accept, which David Albert explains well: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Experience-David-Albert/dp/0674741137 http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Experience-David-Alb... But maybe you do need to posit that to explain things like thoughts and feelings.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- ddemchuk 18y ago
  I think that defining difference could be language. While on a biological level we are not much different than primates and other mammals, what we do have that no other animal so far has exhibited is language. Humans communicate on a level above and beyond anything else in the animal kingdom. This leads into my biggest question regarding consciousness: how does one think without language? We all have an inner self speaking in one language or another, but what if we had no knowledge of any language? Does language define consciousness?
  - JabavuAdams 18y ago
    No. I often think without language. It's a different mode.
    - ddemchuk 18y ago
      thinking and consciousness are different things. Thinking implies that you are evaluating your surroundings as all other animals do. Consciousness is the idea of self awareness: not only are you thinking about the situation, but you're thinking about yourself in the situation in relation to everything else around you.
  - byrneseyeview 18y ago
    how does one think without language? We all have an inner self speaking in one language or another, but what if we had no knowledge of any language? When you cross the street, do you narrate the situation to yourself ("One car approaching at about 25 miles per hour, currently two hundred feet away, decelerating at...") or do you model them visually?
    - ddemchuk 18y ago
      But crossing the street does not require a heightened sense of consciousness. In fact, you are probably not even conscious of nearly everything that's going on as you cross the street, you are just doing it. Now if you were sitting on your couch in dead silence in a pitch black room, what would be going on in your head with no language?
- FlorinAndrei 18y ago
  There doesn't seem to be such a big chasm between humans and the most evolved mammals. It's more a difference of degree. We have language. So do the dolphins, albeit less complex. We are self-aware. So are chimps, dolphins, etc. Perhaps their self-awareness is not as sharply defined and perceived like ours, but it's there. etc. etc.
lisper 18y ago
I recommend Dennet's book. In a nutshell, his thesis is that our subjective experience of consciousness in the here-and-now is an illusion, that what's really going on is the brain is writing and re-writing its memories to build up an internal model that is consistent with all the sensory input its receiving. This crazy-sounding idea is actually consistent with experimental results. You aren't really conscious, you just think you are. :-) You might also enjoy: http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf, especially sections 5 and 6.
- olefoo 18y ago
  > You aren't really conscious, you just think you are. :-) And yesterday is a story you tell yourself to explain today ;-)
- FlorinAndrei 18y ago
  > You aren't really conscious, you just think you are. :-) Sounds like a line from a movie by the Wachowski brothers.
niels_olson 18y ago
I think pg's answer is actually a pretty decent answer for everyone except the non-specialist. I suspect most people suspect the basics are a sort of super-lispy machine where the atoms are neurons and each atom can be contained in as many lists as there are synaptic combinations of neurons which include that neuron. But there are plenty of neuroscientists who think lisp is some sort of speech impediment. I've heard lots of theories, but smart people were probably right a long time ago and we just haven't caught up. That said, even if the lispy sort of theory works out in the end, who cares? I mean, it's like arguing about Godel's incompleteness. No matter how profound the answer, the answer just isn't going to influence your day-to-day life that much. "nothing more than electrical signals" is about all that the vast majority of people really need to understand in order to solve their particular problems.

yan 18y ago

I find that some people (hooray weasel words) are so driven to find that something special that can put humans in a completely different realm from other things and animals that they won't accept that the same processes that run us also run most other living things, just more progressed. I don't know why people need a clear, binary difference of what makes one "human" to appreciate how beautiful life and the mind is. Am I in the minority that has no problems with being categorizes as a mammal, just more progressed, not different altogether?

maxwell 18y ago
Chimpanzees have actually genetically progressed more than us since divergence. http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5808 http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5808
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  "Progressed" is not the right word. They changed more to adapt to their environment. Or, at least, they changed more genetically.
lg 18y ago
Actually, philosophers who think that there's something special about consciousness (i.e. it can't be explained by structure and dynamics, but might be due to another fundamental physical property that the scientific community has so far ignored) don't think that only humans are conscious. David Chalmers once described how thermostats might have a dim form of it, although he just mentioned it as an unlikely possibility.
- graemep 18y ago
  So do some physicists: http://chaos.swarthmore.edu/courses/phys6_2004/QM/19_CatsFriends.pdf http://chaos.swarthmore.edu/courses/phys6_2004/QM/19_CatsFri... The problem is a lack of tools to explore this further. Where are the testable predictions? The question also makes one mistake: the first neuron fires long before birth. Develop meant is a gradual process, so the emergence of consciousness probably is too.
  - lg 18y ago
    Well I don't believe that you need to posit a fundamental consciousness-property to explain collapse. There are clearer explanations that rely only on what physicists (mostly) already accept, which David Albert explains well: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Experience-David-Albert/dp/0674741137 http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Experience-David-Alb... But maybe you do need to posit that to explain things like thoughts and feelings.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
ddemchuk 18y ago
I think that defining difference could be language. While on a biological level we are not much different than primates and other mammals, what we do have that no other animal so far has exhibited is language. Humans communicate on a level above and beyond anything else in the animal kingdom. This leads into my biggest question regarding consciousness: how does one think without language? We all have an inner self speaking in one language or another, but what if we had no knowledge of any language? Does language define consciousness?
- JabavuAdams 18y ago
  No. I often think without language. It's a different mode.
  - ddemchuk 18y ago
    thinking and consciousness are different things. Thinking implies that you are evaluating your surroundings as all other animals do. Consciousness is the idea of self awareness: not only are you thinking about the situation, but you're thinking about yourself in the situation in relation to everything else around you.
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  how does one think without language? We all have an inner self speaking in one language or another, but what if we had no knowledge of any language? When you cross the street, do you narrate the situation to yourself ("One car approaching at about 25 miles per hour, currently two hundred feet away, decelerating at...") or do you model them visually?
  - ddemchuk 18y ago
    But crossing the street does not require a heightened sense of consciousness. In fact, you are probably not even conscious of nearly everything that's going on as you cross the street, you are just doing it. Now if you were sitting on your couch in dead silence in a pitch black room, what would be going on in your head with no language?
FlorinAndrei 18y ago
There doesn't seem to be such a big chasm between humans and the most evolved mammals. It's more a difference of degree. We have language. So do the dolphins, albeit less complex. We are self-aware. So are chimps, dolphins, etc. Perhaps their self-awareness is not as sharply defined and perceived like ours, but it's there. etc. etc.

lisper 18y ago

I recommend Dennet's book. In a nutshell, his thesis is that our subjective experience of consciousness in the here-and-now is an illusion, that what's really going on is the brain is writing and re-writing its memories to build up an internal model that is consistent with all the sensory input its receiving. This crazy-sounding idea is actually consistent with experimental results. You aren't really conscious, you just think you are. :-) You might also enjoy: http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf, especially sections 5 and 6.

olefoo 18y ago
> You aren't really conscious, you just think you are. :-) And yesterday is a story you tell yourself to explain today ;-)
FlorinAndrei 18y ago
> You aren't really conscious, you just think you are. :-) Sounds like a line from a movie by the Wachowski brothers.

niels_olson 18y ago

I think pg's answer is actually a pretty decent answer for everyone except the non-specialist. I suspect most people suspect the basics are a sort of super-lispy machine where the atoms are neurons and each atom can be contained in as many lists as there are synaptic combinations of neurons which include that neuron. But there are plenty of neuroscientists who think lisp is some sort of speech impediment. I've heard lots of theories, but smart people were probably right a long time ago and we just haven't caught up. That said, even if the lispy sort of theory works out in the end, who cares? I mean, it's like arguing about Godel's incompleteness. No matter how profound the answer, the answer just isn't going to influence your day-to-day life that much. "nothing more than electrical signals" is about all that the vast majority of people really need to understand in order to solve their particular problems.