Apparently some mods feel a conversation has a shelf life. That’s too bad, because if it’s truly a great debate, then the subject ought to be timeless. There were some really great ideas in the What Is Consciousness thread I started last summer, and now there is no easy way to connect to them. Oh well.
This is a thread about what does it mean to be conscious? Is it a trait particular to humans, or do animals have it too? How do we know? Can consciousness be measured, it is it a purely subjective experience? How do you know you’re conscious right now? Are you conscious when you dream? Can you be awake and unconscious at the same time? These kinds if questions.
Sounds like perhaps there is a time lag between the actual event and when our mind becomes conscious of it. Maybe we are on auto-pilot much of the time in a state of semi-consciousness. I can drive for ten minutes thinking about something else, obey all the traffic signals and signs and speed limits, but have no conscious recollection of the last twenty blocks. Was I unconscious? Was my consciousness split? Interesting to ponder…
And you arrive at your destination, safe and sound, with no recollection of the last twenty blocks. It is, as if somebody said, we will dedicate this part of the brain to driving the car. And the other part(s) of the brain may visit other planets, or go where they need to go. Should there be an event out of the ordinary in the travel, the other parts of the brain will respond. Maybe that somebody is me, but I am not conscious of the delegation of services to the brain.
The 1950s comic Lord Buckley had a bit called “Subconscious Mind” about this very thing. Here is a link.
Seems to me that consciousness is when we monitor our thoughts and think about what we are thinking. I can write programs, solve plotting problems, do word puzzles in my subconscious, where the answer pops up and I have no idea of how I did it. The conscious part of our minds might not be any smarter than the subconscious part.
My old border collie mix was a genius, who could plan ahead and do some abstract reasoning. But I never saw any indication that he was conscious.
I’m guessing you’re old border collie mix sucked at word puzzles, then? But seriously, I’m not sure that animals don’t possess some kind of consciousness. Is my cat aware she’s a cat? She appears to think she’s queen of the household, but she still depends on us to feed her. Animals don’t possess language the same way we do, but they certainly have some language skills that they use to communicate. I do wonder whether we assume too much that language acquisition is the big identifier for consciousness; after all, if we can’t describe what we’re thinking, how do we know we’re even thinking? And on it goes.
He had great language skills. And he was a great communicator, inventing ways of telling us what he wanted. But as far as I could tell he had no self-awareness. We tried the mirror test several times.
I think I’ve failed the mirror test on occasion. My pets are certainly aware of when they’re hungry, and when they’re being ignored. My cat is acutely aware of exactly how much inertia is required to land on the ledge and not overshoot to the sixteen foot drop on the other side. The pets certainly know where home is, which must be at least part self awareness. But I’m not sure all of these qualities are sufficient to establish consciousness.
I vote for animals being conscious. Dogs, especially, duplicate so many of our human cognitive functions – they have many of the same emotions – they even have a sense of humor! – I’m pretty sure that, whatever consciousness is, dogs have it.
Cats probably also; it’s harder to tell, as they aren’t as demonstrative.
Intelligence is not self-awareness. The only time we examine our directions is when we get lost. Finding our way home, or to our office, automatically shows that this skill has moved into the subconscious where we don’t even have to think about it any more. Ditto getting hungry - we get hungry for lunch or dinner without looking at the clock, right?
Your cat’s knowledge of inertia is matched by the masterful knowledge of physics and trajectories shown by anyone who catches a fly ball. Don’t sell the intelligence of our subconscious short.
I imagine there’s a great deal of knowledge that moves from the conscious to the sub-conscious as we learn to master certain skills. Take tying a show or brushing your teeth—at one time for tricky skills when you’re still a toddler. I think another is musical skills; I have been playing piano now for about forty-five years and literally never think about which fingers to use to play a chord. I just reach for it and it’s there. Even chord progressions I try not to consciously think about and instead just feel the music—unless I have to shout out the changes to someone else who isn’t quite “hearing” it. If J stop and explain how I play music it really occurs to me how many hundreds of smaller skill sets I’ve learned along the way to get to this point.
Part two? You mean to say you didn’t solve the problem of consciousness in the last thread?
One thing I’d say though is once again the discussion has mostly focused on awareness; as though it just means the opposite of unconscious. But for me, the more interesting problems are the hard problem: how it is possible for us to have subjective experiences of red, pain etc, and personal identity; e.g. the transporter problem and when is a conscious entity the same instance of consciousness?
Anyway, let’s hope we get all these wrapped up without need for a third thread.
One way is to peruse the other thread, clicking “+” instead of “Quote.” (“+” (multi-quote) should be located just to the right of “Quote.”) Then come to this thread, click Reply and remember to click “Quote these posts as well,” at the bottom where it prompts “You have selected 3 posts that are not part of this thread.”
I’d appreciate it if you did quote the best-of-thread. The topic interests me but I didn’t follow after thread deviated from my (unposted) advice: whatever you think of his speculations, Julian Jaynes does a good job of clarifying “subjective consciousness” in his book. I’d use his discussion as a starting point, and was disappointed no one did.
Tigers, for example, have huge skills, yet were never conscious at all (?) when they were learning those skills.
[semi-humorous off-topic anecdote]
Several years ago I was in a department store and thought “Oh! there’s a scrufty aging American-looking guy.” It took me several hundred milliseconds before I realized two mirrors had aliogned to catch my own reflection. :smack:
Me too. And I vote for other humans besides just me being conscious.
I hope that seems silly - the question of whether other animals are conscious are not to me seems just as silly as questioning whether other humans are conscious.
When I was a kid I’d sometimes wonder if this whole universe was just an experiment set up to measure my responses. Now that’s what I call early signs of narcissism.
Good point. As long a there’s some kind of discussion going on, there should be no need to kill it. Have you ever read Software by Rudy Rucker, in which an individual’s consciousness can be transferred to a new body, even a machine, to avoid death. Seems to me Anderson had become an ice cream truck by the end of the story.
Ha! I get that double take sometimes. I’ll look into this multi-quite thing you mention. There were some really good ideas in the last thread that were just getting started before the plug was pulled. The mods have to realize that philosophical discussions don’t always follow hard and fast timelines.
But seriously, I’m not sure that animals don’t possess some kind of consciousness. Is my cat aware she’s a cat? She appears to think she’s queen of the household, but she still depends on us to feed her. Animals don’t possess language the same way we do, but they certainly have some language skills that they use to communicate. I do wonder whether we assume too much that language acquisition is the big identifier for consciousness; after all, if we can’t describe what we’re thinking, how do we know we’re even thinking? And on it goes.