Can consciousness be observed?

Great Debates
61

[QUOTE=lekatt]
Yes, I can see your point on remote viewing as an answer to this one study of the numbers. But remote viewing would not work for the majority of OBEs. How about the blind seeing when out of body? I am not going to convince you of anything, I know that, I am just giving information so if you should happen to experience something you will know about it.
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Why wouldn’t remote viewing, which doesn’t use the eyes, not work for blind people?

But my point isn’t to convince you about remote viewing. It’s to say that unless you accept the need for extraordinary evidence for things like this, you wind up with lots of possible explanations and no good way to figure out which is true.

BTW, if it happened to me I trust I would look for the appropriate scientific explanation, and not go off to cloud cuckooland. Remember we’re not denying that the experiences happen, just your explanation for them.

62

[QUOTE=Digital Stimulus]
“Computer stuff”, huh? Actually, Sloman is a noted philosopher who moved into computer science. He’s one of a very few people praised by Minsky (Dennett is another) as doing good work in AI. The “CogAff” project is a study on affect (emotion) and cognition; yes, located particularly in computer science, but cognitive studies is too broad a field to be so dismissive just because this happens to be found in a CS department.

Furthermore, I was responding specifically to your statement:

As you’d see if you read the papers, they deal specifically with “programs” (i.e., actual implementations on a computer) that can deal (autonomously) with “damage” through replicated modules, based on a biological, autoimmune model. In fact, IIRC, they even learn the appropriate model.

The point being, as expressed in the paper(s) in both philosophical and computer science terms, that modules can observe other modules. Hence, an area that was “damaged” – even if it was one responsible for adjusting other modules – could be adjusted by a replicated module.

I do have to admit that replicated modules was too narrow a way to express myself. Upon thinking a bit after hitting “submit”, I realized that I also should have put in something about decentralized control. I’m not sure why people insist that there must be a “director” of sorts. Amazing what can be accomplished by the aggregate action of many small and “stupid” individuals.
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Before we go any further remember we have not established that consciousness is a program running in the brain. Since there is no evidence of this, discussing how that program might work is futile.

63

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
That seems a needlessly simplistic notion of how a self-correcting, self-organising system could work. How about if the self-correction mechanism was distributed as part of the architecture of the whole system, for example?
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We have not determined such system exists, there is no evidence of it.

64

[QUOTE=Digital Stimulus]
You’re right, I think, but only to a degree. The thing is, he sets up such wonderfully easy rebuttals (if not utter disproof, at least plausible/probable counters) that it’s difficult not to take them.

So, the OP’s questions were:

My opinion: there is no “who”. There is, however, an outstanding “Ship of Theseus” problem concerning identity (i.e., how does our sense of self retain some coherent form through changes over time?) We reify our concept of self, treating it as an entity of observation with definite bounds. Embodiment makes this easy – “I” am encapsulated in this body; anything that happens to this physical entity happens to “me”. But when we move to consider the non-physical – particularly non-tangible, internal experience – we lose the easy definition provided by a physical body.

A large part of my answer would concern topics dealt with in the papers to which I linked previously – reflection and introspection of a dynamically changeable system. So long as there is continuity between states (and possibly memory of prior states), an identity can be said to exist.

As to the existence of a “who”, it’s a part of the “user illusion” we all experience; an aggregate of simple processes, brought about in part because some of these processes are hidden. An interesting question (to me) is whether (at least partial) “internal ignorance” of (and by) the system is necessary for a sense of coherent identity.

Finally, the question of “Can consciousness be observed?” IMHO, some waffling is required – yes, but only to some extent. An external observer can impute “consciousness” to others based on the other’s actions. That doesn’t prove an entity has or doesn’t have consciousness, just that the external observer believes it does (a la the Turing Test). Internally, there is also some degree of observation, but much remains hidden.
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I have tried to follow your reasoning. Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to be saying that personal identity is a user illusion, namely the who in who you are. Again, internal igorance is necessary for this identity. So does that mean if science really does find how consciousness works we would lose our identity. Interesting.

65

[QUOTE=Voyager]
Why wouldn’t remote viewing, which doesn’t use the eyes, not work for blind people?

But my point isn’t to convince you about remote viewing. It’s to say that unless you accept the need for extraordinary evidence for things like this, you wind up with lots of possible explanations and no good way to figure out which is true.

BTW, if it happened to me I trust I would look for the appropriate scientific explanation, and not go off to cloud cuckooland. Remember we’re not denying that the experiences happen, just your explanation for them.
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I think remote viewing would work for blind people if they were capable of doing remote viewing. Most people are not capable of doing it. But we have evidence now that consciousness is non-local. It is true for any given situation one could come up with hundreds of possible explanations, that is a given. We must look for the simple, clear answer even if it doesn’t fit into our belief systems. After all, Sherlock Holmes would say, “you eliminate all the possible solutions, and what you have left is the correct solution no matter how absurd it may seem at the time.”

May I remind you that everyone who has introduced a non-mainstream solution to an old problem has been called every name in the book including cuckoo.

66

[QUOTE=Digital Stimulus]

Furthermore, I was responding specifically to your statement:

As you’d see if you read the papers, they deal specifically with “programs” (i.e., actual implementations on a computer) that can deal (autonomously) with “damage” through replicated modules, based on a biological, autoimmune model. In fact, IIRC, they even learn the appropriate model.

The point being, as expressed in the paper(s) in both philosophical and computer science terms, that modules can observe other modules. Hence, an area that was “damaged” – even if it was one responsible for adjusting other modules – could be adjusted by a replicated module.

[/QUOTE]

A bit off topic, but I suspect that philosophers and AI people don’t know that much about the area of fault tolerance, which is quite active. The Fault Tolerant Computing Symposium started int 1967. Besides simple stuff like error correcting codes and redundancy (which most large servers implement today) there is cool work using FPGAs - field programmable gate arrays. These are basically programmable hardware. If you have a chunk of hardware implementing function Y using an FPGA, and it fails, you can sometimes reprogram it to work around the failure, program a spare to take over the function, or even reprogram an FPGA implementing a less critical function X to take over Y. Since neurons are pretty general purpose, this seems like a good analog to what the brain can do, sometimes, to implement fault tolerance.

I’ve actually written a paper with my wife, a biologist, and a colleague on the similarities of fault tolerance in the human body and computer systems, but it was too weird for the conference. Whenever we figure something out and pat ourselves on the back about how clever we are, we find that the same function has come about through evolution already.

67

[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
Why are you guys responding to lekatt? You’ve let him drag yet another thread down into his own little realm of willful ignorance. Just ignore him, he has yet to say anything he hasn’t attempted to assert a dozen times before, and failed to justify just as many times.
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I want you to know my ignorance, while vast, is not willful. I spend each day trying to learn something new.

68

[QUOTE=lekatt]
I think remote viewing would work for blind people if they were capable of doing remote viewing. Most people are not capable of doing it. But we have evidence now that consciousness is non-local. It is true for any given situation one could come up with hundreds of possible explanations, that is a given. We must look for the simple, clear answer even if it doesn’t fit into our belief systems. After all, Sherlock Holmes would say, “you eliminate all the possible solutions, and what you have left is the correct solution no matter how absurd it may seem at the time.”

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You have not shown why your data can’t be explained by remote viewing. It’s true that not everyone can do it all the time, but not everyone can have OBEs either. Perhaps a near death experience enables remote viewing, just as you think it enables an OBE. Plus, we have hardly eliminated all possible situations yet.

And most of the time they were quite justified.

69

To Hentor the Barbarian

While I have a good indepth page of evidence showing consciousness is non-local, not written by me, I can’t post it here. Perhaps if someone started a thread more conducive to these studies of near death experiences I will post it.
It was written by a young man who has an interest in spiritual things. I just coded it so it could be read. After the main part there are links that lead to other links, more a hundred I would guess. Many of them I have not read myself yet. But it does give a really good overall view of the work and research being done on near death experience, especially veridical NDEs. Sorry, don’t want to take this thread off course.

70

[QUOTE=Voyager]
You have not shown why your data can’t be explained by remote viewing. It’s true that not everyone can do it all the time, but not everyone can have OBEs either. Perhaps a near death experience enables remote viewing, just as you think it enables an OBE. Plus, we have hardly eliminated all possible situations yet.

And most of the time they were quite justified.
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Yes, well the most obvious reason is that remote viewing is done while one is conscious and concentrating on the subject. In the case of the blind people, they were clinically dead. They had no brain functions to concentrate with, neither did they have a target. I think this study alone is very significant in showing consciousness continues to live after the death of the body and brain.

Is that what you asked for?

Actually, most of the time they appeared embarrassed, after the proof was in.

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence03.html

71

[QUOTE=lekatt]
Yes, well the most obvious reason is that remote viewing is done while one is conscious and concentrating on the subject. In the case of the blind people, they were clinically dead. They had no brain functions to concentrate with, neither did they have a target. I think this study alone is very significant in showing consciousness continues to live after the death of the body and brain.

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Clinically dead is not the same as no brain function. Care to give evidence that any of those with NDEs brain function stopped? That doesn’t happen until long after the heart has stopped.

72

[QUOTE=lekatt]
Before we go any further remember we have not established that consciousness is a program running in the brain. Since there is no evidence of this, discussing how that program might work is futile.
[/QUOTE]
Speculation is a reasonable counter for your assertions that the brain must have an external director. We speculate an alernative possibility, then you get to try to demonstrate that it is wrong or impossible. If you fail, then you concede that you might possibly be incorrect about the brain necessarily needing an external director.

And I think that there is amble evidence for the fact that the electrical and chemical behavior of the brain is correlated with our thoughts and behaviors, and that there is at least a partial causal relationship in the direction of the electrochemical system being in control of those thoughts and behaviors. (IE: we can get drunk.) So the existence of the ‘program’ running on the brain is proven; all that remains is to determine whether the program solely responsible for our consciousness, or whether some spirit has a gamepad plugged into it allowing the spirit limited control.

If we could not think of a way for the program on the brain to do adaptive self-repair under certain circumstances, then that would be a supporting argument for the spirit with the gamepad. We can (easily) think of a way the brain could do it itself, though, so this avenue of inquiry is not a good reason to believe in a spirit.

73

[QUOTE=lekatt]
Before we go any further remember we have not established that consciousness is a program running in the brain. Since there is no evidence of this, discussing how that program might work is futile.
[/QUOTE]

Futile? Now that’s just silly. Clearly, if one developed something recognized to have the attributes of “consciousness”, it would be an existence proof of (at least one way of) how consciousness works. Granted, it may not be the way human consciousness works, but it would certainly provide clues (if only through a compare and contrast methodology).

But again, I was simply responding to two items you put forth: (1) the idea that is impossible (my paraphrasing) for a program to observe and adjust its own operation and (2) that “science” should look into it.

74

[QUOTE=Voyager]
A bit off topic, but I suspect that philosophers and AI people don’t know that much about the area of fault tolerance, which is quite active.
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Don’t sell us short, Voyager. At least, not all of us. :wink: As a matter of fact, fault-tolerance is a large part of my dissertation work. Not as it concerns hardware, mind you, but there you have it. As time goes on, more attention is paid to the points of “cranky old men” like Minsky and Sloman about embodied intelligence. Of course, there’s also the work of…oh, crap. I forgot their names; the philosophy duo from Berkeley, one of whom brought the issue of “framing issues” to the political scene not very long ago.

In my opinion, it’s long overdue. The point about embodied intelligence, that is.

If you wouldn’t mind, could I get one or more of citation, copy, abstract, bibliography? I think I have my email/messaging settings set up properly. More exposure from different viewpoints is always good, if only for my own edification. :slight_smile:

75

[QUOTE=lekatt]
I have tried to follow your reasoning. Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to be saying that personal identity is a user illusion, namely the who in who you are. Again, internal igorance is necessary for this identity. So does that mean if science really does find how consciousness works we would lose our identity. Interesting.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, I think that “identity” is a “user illusion”. This is a statement with a very narrow applicability; in particular, directed at researchers in “identity theory”, who demand strict consistency and full explanations about what they define as “identity”. It may or may not apply to a common-sense definition of the term.

I do not know if “internal ignorance” (that is, unobservability of at least some internal processes/states) is necessary for “identity”. It seems like a possibility to me, and is an interesting question. Which is just what I said.

No, it does not mean that if science established how consciousness worked it would “erase” our identity. Take as an analogy that knowing how an optical illusion “works” does not suddenly remove the illusion.

Sorry for the three consecutive posts.

76

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
And you can provide a link to a peer-reviewed study as promised, or admit that you don’t have one.
Which is it?
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I pulled some of Sabom’s stuff off google scholar. He publishes exclusively in the Journal of Near Death Studies. (okay, he has a review article in the Journal of Religion and Health). None of them are actual data articles, but review articles which are basically opinion pieces. He has no peer reviewed stuff. I’m willing to bet the other authors cited don’t score much better.

77

[QUOTE=Digital Stimulus]
Don’t sell us short, Voyager. At least, not all of us. :wink: As a matter of fact, fault-tolerance is a large part of my dissertation work. Not as it concerns hardware, mind you, but there you have it. As time goes on, more attention is paid to the points of “cranky old men” like Minsky and Sloman about embodied intelligence. Of course, there’s also the work of…oh, crap. I forgot their names; the philosophy duo from Berkeley, one of whom brought the issue of “framing issues” to the political scene not very long ago.

[/quote]

Well, my Theory of Knowledge professor had a PDP-11 manual in his office (back when PDP_11s were new.) However the FPGA stuff is not well known. I know of it since I set in on grad student seminars at a university where research on this is being done.

I’ll send a pdf version of the paper. It is unpublished - since I work in industry, publishing is more of a hobby than a necessity. I’ve published something almost equally wacky at the same conference, which got real good audience feedback, so I might try it again.

78

[QUOTE=lekatt]
We have not determined such system exists, there is no evidence of it.
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so, let me just see if I got this straight - It’s OK for you to speculate and hypothesise, but it’s not OK for me to do it. Got it.

Your statement about “what if the damage was to the part of the brain that was capable of adjusting itself. Then there would be no improvement, yet there is always improvement.” is like saying “what if we removed the part of the ocean that makes waves and put it in a bucket - then there would be no more waves in the ocean”.

79

OK, this thread is going as a lot of threads go that I post in – it stops being about the OP and starts being about me. So it is time to leave this thread so those who want can continue discussing the OP.

80

[QUOTE=Voyager]
Well, my Theory of Knowledge professor had a PDP-11 manual in his office (back when PDP_11s were new.) However the FPGA stuff is not well known. I know of it since I set in on grad student seminars at a university where research on this is being done.
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[hijack 1]
From what I’ve read, the big issue (I see) with FPGA fault-tolerance is that the fixes need to be pre-computed and stored in an accessible area on the chip. Is that right? Again, I’m not a hardware guy, and so my knowledge/exposure to this is not only pretty limited, but may also be out of date.
[/hijack 1]

[hijack 2]
Thanks. Do let me know if I screwed up my user settings and you can’t locate my email. I’m looking forward to purusing it.
[/hijack 2]