Sounds like something else I heard, except I believe it was liberalism (as opposed to conservatism).
Grin: yes, I was definitely paraphrasing that familiar aphorism.
Right, I don’t even know what a satisfying answer would look like. The ghost is still spooky.
Another thing I can’t wrap my head around is why subjective experiences even exist. One imagines it has its uses in an evolutionary satisfactory sense, but I don’t see the impetus for evolving beyond “numb” input-output type setups, or something like p-zombie animals. Or in other words, why does pain have to hurt so much? The brain could simply detect the incoming pain (dmg signals) and then react off its programming.
And I don’t mean everything is an instinct, either. Underneath all of our consciousness there’s modeling and equations and heuristics. I don’t see where being aware helps. You’ll see explanations like oh, it’s the mind modeling itself and other minds in an environment and then boom, consciousness! That isn’t particularly satisfying. Especially as “stupid” computer AI improves. One imagines we’ll have fantastically intelligent AI-robots that don’t have “anyone home,” so to speak. I don’t think it’ll be like sci-fi when a robot just wakes up. We’re missing the special sauce.
Well, the first part of the idea makes very good sense: self-modeling is an extension of modeling others’ minds, and modeling others’ minds is a very good survival tool, especially in a social species. It’s extremely useful to know if someone else is mad at you. Self-modeling can help determine why someone is mad at you.
(“Was it because I peed in his soup? Yep! That’s gotta be it! I know I’d be mad if he peed in mine.”)
From self-modeling to true self-awareness, as in the development of a “sense of self” as strong as ours, seems like a huge jump…but it might not be. It could be a big revolutionary change (Julian Jaynes) or it could be a series of small changes.
It’s almost certainly an evolutionary advantage, otherwise we wouldn’t be wasting all this metabolic energy on it. As you suggested, a p-zombie could do what’s needed, garnering nearly all of the advantages, while paying a much lower cost.
I think it would be interesting if, just for a moment, you woke up with someone else’s consciousness. In their house, in their world, and you’re all like what the f—and then you close your eyes and open them again and you’re back to being you. Sort of like a wrong number but just for a few seconds. When you think about it, that sort of how past-you and present-you are, or the relationship between present-you and future-you; you’re the same organism, but the consciousness only goes one way. You remember your past (or pieces of it), but you can’t remember your future. Unless you get unstuck in time like in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.
I’ve had dreams very much like that.
I think dreams may actually be the inspiration for where stories come from. We can see ourselves in the third person (I often see the back of my head, for example), something we can’t achieve in real life. It is also possible to achieve more of an omniscient point if view, where we have access to everyone’s thoughts, though I confess most of my dreams are first person or limited omniscient. But flying, when it happens, is a pretty cool ability.
Interesting idea! I, too, very often dream from a point of view (a “camera angle,” so to speak) slightly above and behind my own head.
(A mystic might suggest this is where the soul resides: not inside the head, but outside it, hovering just nearby!)
I, too, have noticed a vague “limited omniscience” tone to dreaming. For instance, when a bad guy is feigning being friendly, but really just wants to get up close so he can make a sneak attack…in dreams, I’m never fooled. I know just what he wants.
I also have a theory that dreams are where the idea of ghosts comes from. A loved one has died…but we still meet with them, and hear what they have to say, in our dreams. To very early mankind, this must surely seem like evidence of the survival of a person’s spirit past the death of their body. (Even to us, who know better, such dreams are remarkably disturbing!)
Are dreams a conscious state?
Crane
No easy answer there. A lot of people do lucid or semi-lucid dreaming, and thus their dreams partake somewhat of consciousness.
You might ask the same of hallucinatory thinking, or deep feverish delirium, or about a deep hypnotic trance. Or even someone who is meditating or daydreaming.
One of the classic terms of art is “altered state of consciousness.” People who are dreaming are cut (largely) from the outside world, but are still reacting meaningfully to their own dream environment.
Say I dream that a big ugly ogre is attacking me, and, in the dream, I respond by hauling out an old-style flintlock pistol and shooting him. Awareness of the situation; stimulus-response; judgement; intent; organized response. It all sounds pretty much like consciousness!
Dreaming seems more like ‘computer consciousness’ - just internal signals rambling about the system.
There is no real external input. Nothing being observed and considered.
Crane
You’re largely right. I will quibble just a teensy bit, and note that external events do intrude into dreams. For instance, if a car outside your bedroom window honks its horn, you might suddenly dream about geese. (I have snored so hard, I’ve dreamed about heavy earthmoving machinery!)
But, yeah, mostly, dreaming is self-absorbed and internal brain processing. (But…so are most memory processes. When you sit and close your eyes and remember your first kiss, you’re operating solely on internal systems, with no external input.)
The best part about dreaming is flying!
You and Nietzsche both.
Ouch!
Consider what you “see” when you’re dreaming. Certainly our visual cortex is stimulated and we can “see” all kinds of things, but in reality all we can really see is the inside of our eyelids. So that would have to be a strike against consciousness when we’re dreaming, because at the simplest level we’re not even aware that we’re not actually seeing anything. I suppose one could extend that thought to out waking consciousness too whenever we imagine something in our mind’s eye…
This is an interesting article that I think has a bearing on what we think of as consciousness, particularly how our memories of things can turn out to be completely wrong even when we’re sure we’re right.
Stephen Jay Gould had an essay on the volatility of memories. He very clearly remembered being a child, sitting with his uncle on the steps and looking at the buildings on the other side of the way – except that when he went back and checked, years later, the steps didn’t face those buildings.
(And…heh…I’m probably remembering the essay wrong, too!)
Funny thing! But, dammit, consciousness is the one thing we can be absolutely sure of. And I’m sure we were conscious when we experienced those memories at the time they happened.
Well, our bodies are imperfect. Ever dropped a glass while washing dishes? Or just had your hands tremble for no reason at all? Ever had a sudden muscle spasm? Ever go on a sneezing or hiccupping jag that doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to stop?
Our brains are subject to the same sorts of flaws. It’s pretty nifty that our consciousness is as coherent as it is. It isn’t at all hard to imagine a real world that is vaguely dreamlike, where (because of memory faults) things just keep changing all the time. That red fruit used to be yummy, now its poisonous. (Oops, I was thinking of the other red fruit!)
I think, to the very earliest primitive humans (and pre-human species) life was much like that. They couldn’t trust their memories, they couldn’t trust the world, and they couldn’t trust their consciousness.
Our civilized development of such things as writing and statuary have prepared us, philosophically, for the concept of “permanence” and allow us to focus on things like “canonical form.” (What is the “best” version of Shakespeare or Dickens?)
Mankind is said to be the only animal that alters the environment to suit its needs. What’s a little scary about that is that our minds are also part of our environment.
Since you asked about animals…
The Bible
Numbers 22:28 Then Yahweh opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Bil’am, “What have I done to you, that you have beaten me these three times?”
29 And Bil’am said to the donkey, “Because you have mocked me. I desire there were a sword in my hand, for I would have killed you by now!”
30 And the donkey said to Bil’am, “Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden, ever since I became yours, to this day? Was I ever known to do so to you?” And he said, “No.”
So we see here when a donkey was able to speak the donkey remembered and knew who their owner was and had an understanding that she was his donkey. This appears to show evidence of consciousness that the donkey knew who the donkey was and when the donkey was made able to speak she could finally communicate this.