What is Consciousness (Self-Awareness)?

Great Debates
21

Awareness helps meta-knowledge because it can observe observation.

I’m not sure awareness and self-awareness can be easily distinguished, or that awareness can develop separately from a development of a concept of self and self-observation. Say that I am watching a little animal play. Watching this animal play can cause all sorts of things in me, as a simple or complex chain of physical reactions. None of that requires awareness. I could try to hunt down that little playing animal and want it for lunch purely based on instinct.

I am aware if I observe that I am watching a little animal play. Can this observation of watching take place without a concept of self? I don’t think so. It’s very specifically the combination of the development of self that allows awareness of my own actions to come into being.

22

You are self-aware. You don’t have to notice that you’re in the process of observation. It’s not clear or certain that self-awareness must transpire for consciousness to exist.

23

But that has been my argument, and I’ve given good reasons why. I can only agree with your last sentence if you define consciousness as not the same as self-aware. I can live with that - say that consciousness is the activity of the brain that links sensory input to memory and action, something which does not take place if someone is knocked unconscious. Then a dog has consciousness, and a human being has both consciousness and self-awareness.* I can live with such distinctions - but my explanations have been surpassing such concepts substantially enough to not matter too much what labels you apply to which part of the process.

  • Whether you can be aware of something without a self, I highly doubt, however, for reasons given.
24

How do you deny self-awareness to the dog?

25

(I’ll get to the OP in more detail some later time)

Communicting is indeed strong evidence for awareness. The Turing Test is based around the premise that a computer/program which can converse as well as a human can be said to be thinking. This is, essentially, a Functionalist view
The problem arises when we consider ‘canned’ responses, like those of an ELIZA program. Those are, in my opinion, attempts to counterfit intelligence, not produce an artifical version of it.

Now, being able to communicte certain thoughts that one might have (eg. “I’m tired.” “I’m hungry.” “I want a cig.”) all go towards proving self awareness. If you are accurately reporting to the external world about your internal brainstates, I see no other rational explenation for what’s going on.

In other words, the process of realizaing one is hungry is being aware of one’s self. Being able to report this fact simply demonstrates your understanding to the outside world.

You do indeed need to notice, actively, certain things in order to observe them. There is a difference between seeing something, and being conscious of it. This is roughly analagous to the divide between perception and sight.

How do you prove self awareness in the dog? I see nothing more than an elaborate Pavlovian series of responses.

26

That’s not what I, and presumably, Arwin meant. Self-awareness refers to being aware that you’re aware. Not the ability to focus attention.

How do I prove that you are conscious? I can’t. I simply judge your behaviour. Notice that it is of a similar complexity as mine, and “complete the picture”, so to speak, i.e. I presume that you possess other (invisible) attributes that mirror mine. On a personal note, I had a dog for 14 years, and she exhibited moods in her behaviour, which would indicate some sort of a self. I don’t see a difference of kind, only degree. Just to lay my cards on the table, I’m a panpsychist, specifically I believe that consciousness itself is a primary arising in nature and not something privileged to select organic arrangements. However, the objects of consciousness and their complexity may be successfully correlated to complexity of the substrate.

27

Not true.
You cannot be conscious of internal brainstates if you do not focus attention on them. We may argue about liminal and subliminal effects and subconscious understanding, but to talk about consciousness we must, perforce, take into account the degree of attention that is ‘paid’ to a phenomena.

As an example, let’s say there’s a camouflaged moth on a tree. Now, unless you devote sufficient cognitive power to it, you won’t notice the moth. But, without a doubt, light bouncing off the moth will reach your eyes. In such a situation, you have certainly seen the moth but you are not conscious of it. I believe this is a rough n’ ready analogy which will serve our purposes here.

Sure you can. First I’d advise you to read over the link I provided to Functionalism (with the caveat that I see some major flaws in Functionalism).
Second, if you ask me questions as to my current mental/brain states, and you can assume that I’m not a highly sophisticated ELIZA program, then we can conclude that I am indeed conscious.

The battle does not always go to the strong, nor the race to the swift.
But that’s the way to bet.

If I am performing as if I possessed consciousness, and you cannot prove that I do not (eg. that I am using canned responses), then the only valid conclusion is that I am, indeed, conscious.

I would argue that voicing a linguistic representation of my internal states would be quite sufficient. In addition, it is quite possibly to track, exactly, what neurons are firing and what patterns of activity we see in the brain.

Mood does not indicate a conception self, but a disposition towards behavior. This can have purely physical grounding. Moreover, there is nothing to indicate that your dog had the requisite self-awareness to recognize why she felt what she did, or, even, that she wasn’t simply responding on a stimulus-response basis.

I see one as purely mechanical, and one as partially volitional. There is no evidence that a dog can ‘turn its attention inwards.’ There is ample evidence that humans can.

Based on what research?

I don’t grok this metaphor, can you elaborate?

Anyways, I have to run to class. I’ll check in and try to respond more to everybody later this evening or some time tomorrow.

28

Read The Illusion of Conscious Will by Wegner. I’m not going to butcher his book by attempting to summarize it.

29

An assertion which frames cause-effect a priori. Do these brainstates arise because you focus attention, or vice versa?

Except that’s a)not what I’m talking about. Let me repeat: Self-awareness is being aware of your self. You’re arguing that attentional focus is a prerequisite for self-awareness, which is a different topic, b)In your analogy, object emergence (those dot patterns in the snow represent a dog type) is accompanied by direct attention, but not necessarily self-awareness.

[my emphasis]

That begs the question :dubious:

Again, begs the question. You assume that consciousness is necessary for complex behaviour not readily packaged into reflexive modules.

Both of which are observed only by the observer. The qualia, that your brain produces, if any, is not recieved by my mind.

I can say the same about humans. So far as one holds nuances of behaviour as indicative of self, I believe my dog possessed a sense of self. But I’m not dogmatic about that :slight_smile:

All depends on what you hold as evidence.

30

A brain always has a state, as I’m sure you can agree, and it constantly changes. It’s the observation of a part of that state at a certain time which you can only do by focussing your attention to it, or as I would say, if your self-awareness program happens to be directed to that data by current circumstances.

Object emergence is just something akin to analogy perception and as has been shown can be done by bees. We contend, indeed, that awareness has nothing to do with it. I can train a neural net or other software to do the same thing (think about the modern brand of security cams than can recognise faces).

No, it’s necessary for observing inner states. That’s not just any complex behavior not readily packaged into reflexive modules - I’d almost say sooner the reverse, depending on how you interpret reflexive.

Say that a toddler looks at a ball, a cubus and a triangle (or what it’s 3D equivalent is called), and after a while figures that the ball fits the circular hole, just by looking and parsing. Does that involve awareness, do you think?

:wink:

Mood doesn’t really have much to do with self-awareness, but with the hormones that prepare our bodies for certain activities. So if dogs have moods and people have moods, that doesn’t really say anything about them being self-aware or not. The fact that dogs are social animals traditionally living in hierarchies with social and communicative functions make something like self-awareness much more probable than mood-swings.

I do think, however, that memories related to certain stimuli that affect these hormones can trigger the release of such hormones all by themselves. “Thinking happy thoughts” does affect our moods, I think, though that of course also depends on the strength of other triggers present. And part of the advantage of consciousness could be that we can be more flexible in that respect, in manipulating our primitive reflexes to certain situations.

31

huh. where to begin.

let’s start with the title. i had a flash in a pub a week or two ago about the definition of consciousness. i’ve always found that discussing consciousness was incredibly difficult because no one ever knew to what they were referring. then i thought about what makes me say “i’m conscious.” i realized that it was my ability to translate thought into language. so there’s my definition:

consciousness - n. - the ability to translate thought into language.

now, that leaves the undefined terms “thought” and “language”. i think we can agree, though, that these are things that differ in degree rather than in kind among things we might consider conscious. a computer, for example, could have a bit read as a thought. or something more complex, like a floating point addition. a bee could have “food is present” as a thought.

language, too, differs significantly in complexity. bees communicate through movements. we have vocal and sign languages (someone mentioned vocal thought being required for consciousness – deaf people think in sign language). whales have complex calls and songs by which they communicate. all these things are, to a degree, conscious, and it seems that we as humans measure the degree of consciousness by the degree of complexity of the thoughts and languages involved.

several people here seem to be arguing that “canned responses” are somehow insufficient evidence for conscious thought, or self-awareness (or any number of other things–there seems to be way too much switching of words and definitions in this thread for me to get a good handle on it all, and i think this area calls for precision). however, at least one of those same people have argued that on a fundamental level, humans do nothing but produce canned responses based on, presumably, a much more complex set of processes. considering that, is it difficult to believe my last sentence in the previous paragraph?

on to self-awareness: there are two things that are necessary for self-awareness. recognizing oneself in a mirror is not one of them. they are this: having a definition of self, and being able to recognize the object defined as self from other things. an octopus, for example, could not be self-aware by our definition, since if we held it to our standards, its arms are part of itself. since octopuses have no bones, and can’t process the huge amount of information that would be required for them to have a sense of where their arms are, their arms are largely autonomous, and they can only tell where their arms are by looking at them. octopuses, however, are also very intelligent. they have demonstrated problem-solving skills (like uncorking a jar containing a crab) and memory (by improving the time during which they go through a maze, for example). they may have a different definition of self than we would give them. their “self” might not even end at their arms. they may be able to recognize objects and delineate the world around them. i would say, then, that they are self-aware.

given that, i think self-awareness is largely irrelevant in any discussion of consciousness and conscious thought. it seems to require an arbitrary distinction. myself, i don’t even think i have an expressable definition of “i” or “myself” or “me”. where do i begin and end? it’s a question that probably must be answered to some extent before i can say “i am conscious”, but only to the extent that to whatever i refer as “i” can produce thoughts and express those thoughts through language.

does anyone think there are conscious phenomena not encompassed by my definition? i’d very much like to get the opinions of others on it.

32

The above quote demonstrates why this can’t be a serious thread. You’re just making up your own definitions of consciousness, etc. If you want to get serious, you’re going to have to read up on a lot of the actual science being done on the topic so that you can at least get the terminology straight.

I’m not saying that the science being done right now is all that great; but you at least have to know how people are using words (ie, the semantics of the matter) in order to build on or refute what they’re doing.

For example, the relationship between consciousness and self-awareness doesn’t just come as an “afterthought.” From what I’ve read, self-awareness is considered to be a prerequisite for consciousness, although not necessarily a sufficient condition (the ability of a mind to assess itself to some degree is sometimes also considered necessary). Moreover, consciousness most definitely isn’t the difference between the nervous system processing sensory output and not processing output–at least this isn’t how “real scientists” talk about it. Most thinkers on the matter don’t consider dogs and cats to be “conscious” in the same way people are, and “self-awareness” is put lower on the mind hierarchy than “consciousness.”

Arwin, I am not invalidating everything you say in your post, but it sounds as though you are creating your own cognitive science from scratch. A better approach is to say, “Whereas scientists typically say, I say.”

Nor am I an expert on how scientists talk about these things, but I have read Dennett’s Consciousness Explained and articles here and there on the topic. I stated my opinion in the other thread that I think we’re in the era of calx and phlogiston as far as cognitive science goes.

33

Not self-awareness. You seem to be defining emotions and thoughts as part of self-awareness. I’ll repeat: self-awareness is awareness of the self i.e. the entity which perceives.

Not directly. But mood, especially complex mood schemas, seem to throw off the notion of dogs as mechanical. From there, it is just a matter of association that such animals may have a sense of self as well. It’s a heuristic. Maybe there are mood-oriented creatures with no sense of self. Doesn’t seem to be a way to test.

34

I dropped out of this thread a while ago because I was beginning to doubt I was self-aware. I keep getting hung up on the definition of “I.”

Anyway, what drew me back is the dog as an example. I think that dogs clearly possess a sense of self that goes beyond Pavlovian responses. I’ll use an example from my own dog to illustrate.

I trained my dog to obey the “away” command. I point, give his name followed by the word “away” and he goes off in that direction. I was teaching a new dog this command when my dog went into herding mode, barking and driving the new dog in the direction I was pointing. I repeated the command with a new direction and he repeated the driving action correctly. I continued this and it made training the new dog go alot faster. What did I learn about my dog from this?

He understands some commands are for him and others aren’t. (knowing the boundries of self)

He understands what a command means. (not just conditioned to a canned response)

He improvises new actions to make a command be followed. (low level of abstraction, and creativity)

I didn’t realize how rare it is for animals to understand pointing, dogs seem to do it naturally, but according to research I’ve read even primates close to humans don’t grasp this concept easily.

Now I just have to decide if I’m self-aware.

35

Good luck :wink:

36

No it doesn’t. Obviously you can see from the thread title that I’m relatively on par with the ‘scientifically accepted’ way of looking at the terms, at least in the way you define them below. However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t, in an afterthought, realise that the word consciousness can mean different things. However, that comes partly from a linguistic bent in me. I sometimes like to investigate terms by how we use them in practice. If someone is knocked-out, do we ask ‘are you aware? are you self-aware?’? But we do sometimes ask ‘are you conscious?’. “Is he conscious?” On the other hand, we do ask things like “Are you aware you’re standing on my foot? You’re fly is undone? Etc.” So I’m starting to realise that in the real world, we make a distinction between the two.

Well as I said, questioning the semantics is something I do regularly, and find rather helpful.

Self and awareness. From what you write, I don’t get a feeling at all that my use of the term conflicts here, partly because it seems noone is all that sure what they mean. I’m beginning to understand what you mean when you mentioned 1870. However, like I said before, I think that the specialists have the answers, but the work of the specialists hasn’t been properly combined into a unifying theory/model yet that can be tested.

‘Real Scientists’ don’t talk much about this subject at all.

I’m trying to think on my own feet. But I don’t, at this stage, consider myself all to different from a scientist who tries to do the same thing. I’ve been trained as a scientist myself - enough to know there’s a difference between writing a paper, a dissertation, a scientific article, and having a friendly discussion on a forum like this one. :wink:

I just checked some abstracts of Dennett’s book, which I’d already forgotten about - I’ve just read some small parts of it that someone I had a discussion on consciousness with when I was studying Artificial Intelligence - and from the looks of it, I’ve repeated a lot of the things he said in that book in my writing on consciousness here. Since you’ve read the book though, you can tell me if I’m wrong in that assumption (bar my questioning the ‘semantics’).

Perhaps I’ll pick up some books today, have a holiday coming up and could be interesting stuff to ponder in a relaxed atmosphere. :slight_smile:

37

You’ve got a good point in this, but I’ve tried making that distinction, and so far I seem to have a problem with distinguishing between being aware and self. Can you be aware and not have a sense of self? It’s a fundamental question, and is highly dependent on your definition.

What’s the difference between sensing and being aware? Is there is a distinction between seeing something and noticing something? What is the difference? What is being aware more than reacting to input from your senses?

When I apply these questions to the biological computer, I’m not sure that awareness is something that’s required at any level. I don’t even see that it is necessary to make the distinction. The only useful meaning for awareness that I’ve been able to come up with, is the meta-observation. Noticing that I’m noticing something.

For me to notice that I’m noticing something, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need, above all, me. So self is a prerequisite. Self-Awareness is a pre-requisite of Awareness, it is implied by Awareness, its inextricably linked to awareness, it may even be pointless to distinguish between the two altogether because each time I’m aware I can only be because I’m aware of myself.

Hence me confusing and mixing the terms, in your view. (I never brought in emotions by the way)

I consider emotions highly mechanical. But I do think there is mood related behavior that could be linked to self-awareness, and maybe even only to self-awareness. An interesting case study could be learned helplessness. What animals can achieve this state, and what can’t? And are there individuals, among animals, that never achieve this state, or not? Among humans? If optimistic thinking works to overcome depression, does that mean we can program ourselves into feeling a certain way? (I think so, but I think there are both hardware and software aspects of depression - in other words, I think we can influence our thinking but there are physical limits)

(The noogenesis.com article continous with the topic of depression …)

38

Yes. When I woke up today and looked at the alarm clock, I did not, in any way, think “I’m looking at that clock”, or “Look, there’s a me who’s looking at that clock.”.

Depends on your definitions. I could say the two terms in your first sentence are synonymous. But you seem to use ‘sensing’ in a passive context, as in ‘my current visual field’. But you see your visual field, because you are aware of it.

First sentence is right, first two parts of second are not, to me. Half the problem is our terms. Maybe you should rigorously define the following: consciousness, awareness, self, self-awareness.