(This is my first post, so bear with me…)
Where does consciousness come from? Is self-awareness something that grows out of complexity? If we were to perfectly simulate a human brain, would that simulation be conscious, or simply a lifeless reproduction?
Finally, if consciousness is a by-product of complexity, is the universe itself a conscious entity?
First, no one knows factual answers to these questions yet, as we haven’t created any non-human intelligences. However, I’ll answer with some reasonable (I hope) answers.
When it comes right down to it, brains cause minds. Consciousness arises from a certain type of complexity, but not just any complexity. Ther must be a form of feedback loop, for one thing, so that the entity can process some information about itself.
I happen to believe that if we did perfectly model a human brain, it would be conscious. You can imagine replacing one neuron at a time with some sort of artificial neuron which acts just like a natural one. After each such replacement, the brain operates exactly the same input/output wise. If you keep going, all will have been replaced by the artificial neurons. Where would consciousness be lost?
If you’d like to read an engaging novel about the nature of consciousness and reality, I would suggest Greg Egan’s “Permutation City” or “Axiomatic”
Well, I’m pretty sure I’m conscious.
I’m pretty sure my dog is too.
When she was born, I don’t think my daughter was. Now she is.
I think my cat is conscious.
We even had a bird that I was pretty sure was self-aware.
Pring addressed this issue in Society of Mind, which requires quite a bit of work to understand.
Basically, it’s not so much an issue of complexity, but a by product of inductive reasoning.
In other words, you’re conscious when you can make an educated guess.
Consciousness and awareness of consciousness is complicated by language. We can even call it language consciousness if we want to separate from animal consciousness, because language structure is proven to be instinctual, but not specific to any language (Pinker). Are dreams structured as primitive consciousness before language? Hunter-gatherer aborgines in many places value dreams as being more real in the way that perhaps we value a theory to be more valid (essence, but symbolically so). One thing that I have noted about dreams (maybe not the same for everyone) is that fantasies are experienced in the objective camera mode, and dreams are subjective camera mode. Dreams seem to be symbolic language, before words, which do not flow easily in dreams. Even if we assume that language is a software to a brain hardware, we cannot easily assume consciousness is influenced by language one way or the other. It may be the case that language either broadens or masks consciousness, but doesn’t create it. What is a fear or fantasy? False consciousness?
TheNerd:
Are factual answers even possible? How do you test for consciousness? For that matter, how do I know that I’m not the only person to experience consciousness? (All these are good questions that can’t really be answered, which means it’s extra fun trying. ;))
So consciousness is, in a sense, recursive? I think I’ve heard that somewhere, and it does ring true.
I tend to agree with this. Isn’t that called a “soft upload”?
Now on my “To read” list. 
Scylla:
That sounds reasonable, but I wonder if it’s that simple. Perhaps consciousness springs from a combination of factors, induction and recursion being two…
Does that mean that my creature in Black & White is a reasoning being? He makes educated guesses as "maybe I should go to sleep because I am tired. Or, that village is on fire maybe I should put it out.
To me conciousness doesen’t matter, only the perception of conciousness. If something acts like it is aware and able to make decisions based on its enviroment it is concious.
Brian:
I understand the connection you are making between dreams and language. If we assume (for the moment) that dreams can be meaningful in a symbolic sense, then they do form a kind of language. But is the symbolism consistent enough?
I’m not quite sure how language factors into the idea of consciousness, however. The two ideas seem separate to me.
Asmodean:
Perhaps not “educated guesses” per se, but induction seems to me to be a reasonable indicator. Then again, all that’s required for induction to occur is some pattern recognition. Is OCR software conscious?
Dream symbolism as language is consistent because it is private (or so we assume). If I told a psychologist that I dreamed of a bike falling from a blimp, I would expect him/her to ask what experiences I have had with bikes or blimps to figure it out. As for language meaning something about consciousness, I suggest this because language has instinct structure (Chomsky).
A persons sense of the present moment as an amalgamation and continuation of previous moments has a lot to do with consciousness. An amnesiac may be perfectly capable of carrying on an apparently normal conversation, interacting appropriately with the rest of the world, or even making “educated” guesses and still have no awareness of what they were doing five minutes ago.
An outside observers perception of consciousness is not sufficient to “explain” consciousness.
There are several drugs (eg Haldol) which can produce amnesia as a side effect. It can be quite difficult to spot unless you know how to look for it.
Well, although instinct determines our thoughts and actions (by how much depends on how broadly you define “instinct”, I should imagine), how is it related to consciousness? Perhaps consciousness occurs when one goes beyond mere instinct.
There are currently a few competing theoretical models of consciousness (extremely simplified, since I don’t have my sources available at present):dualist (mind/brain are discrete entities), materialist (mind/brain are more unified), and mysterian (it’s unknowable and always will be). There is an interesting book called “Consciousness Explained” by Dennett (don’t remember the first name; sorry); also, as mentioned, “The Mind’s I” (of which Dennett is a co-author), and a couple of books by Pinker (“The Language Instinct” and “How The Mind Works”) that deal somewhat with the issue. I also know of Roger Penrose’s “Shadows of the Mind” (although most scientists studying the issue disagree with his conclusions, IIRC) and (I think) “The Conscious Mind” by Chalmers. You should be able to get some information (or at least opinion)from one of these.
Lucid dreams offer an interesting (and usually overlooked) perspective on the nature of consciousness. In a typical dream the dream ego goes about its business assuming the dream world is in fact the “real” world. This delusion appears to limit the level of dream consciousness. This level may represent a type of proto-consciousness, as some higher mammals may experience (I think this is what Brian was getting at earlier), or as our pre-language ancestors experienced.
In lucid dreams, however, the dream ego somehow realizes its true situation – “this is a dream.” Consciousness as we tend to think of it (waking consiousness) is the result. In terms of brain function, lucid dreams seem to be the result of certain parts of the pre-frontal cortex “waking up” while the body remains asleep. IMHO lucid dreams are woefully under-studied in terms of understanding consciousness.
I can’t believe no one’s mentioned Julian Jaynes’ wonderfully weird book The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Every year I find something else that I disagree with in this book, but it’s a thought-provoking volume, all the same, which is appropriate. Read it and pick out the stuff you don’t agree with, and it’s surprising how much you can agree with what’s left.
Also, Carl Sagan’s The Dragons of Eden.
Fine Cal, beat me to it.
Anyway, as short intro to some authors mentioned in this thread.
Daniel C. Dennett is a cognitive psychologist. You can find his home page here. He’s very much a “mechanist”, in the sense that he thinks that all cognitive processes can be explained by recourse to physical laws, as opposed to mental phenomena such as qualia. This can leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths. His book “Consciousness Explained” was described by Thomas Nagel as “Consciousness Explained Away”. Dennett’s big take on consciousness is that something is conscious when you adopt an “intentional stance” toward it. You adopt th intentional stance toward something if you habitually use/are required to use language that posits internal mental states when dealing with that thing.
Julian Jaynes was a certified genius/loon. A good page for him is here. His big theory is historical. He thinks that consciousness is a form of mental organization (in particular as a metaphor of physical space for mental “space”). It’s useful for such things as social discourse and long-range planning. The (really) controversial part of the theory is his idea that historically recent people (like the ancient Greeks and Hebrews) were not conscious like we are (they were “bicameral”), and that the gods resulted from a loss of this bicameral organization and the resultant modern consciousness.
http://julianjaynessociety.tripod.com/essays.html
Abstracts of essays (non-copyrighted):
*Verbal hallucinations were studied in a variety of groups. In a sample of hospitalized schizophrenics and a sample of homeless people on the streets on New York City, such voices were often multiple, critical in women, but more often commands in men, and commonly religious. In a carefully randomized sample of normal college students, a questionnaire study revealed that almost a third had “clearly heard a voice when no one had spoken to me.” The voices were identified as parents, friends, dead relatives, or God. From a study of “imaginary playmates,” it was concluded that verbal hallucinations were occurring here also. And a non-verbal group of congenital quadriplegics, who had never spoken but with whom communication would be established, heard voices they identified as God, such voices being usually helpful. Parallels were then drawn between modern verbal hallucinations and what is revealed in ancient texts. Ancient civilizations seem to have been governed by such hallucinations called gods, a mentality known as the bicameral mind. It was concluded that the reason verbal hallucinations are found so extensively, in every modern culture, in normal students, schizophrenics, children, and vividly reported in the texts of antiquity is that such hallucinations are an innate propensity, genetically evolved as the basis of an ancient preconscious mentality.
. . .
The problem of consciousness and its corollary the mind body problem have been with us at least since Descartes. An approach to a solution to both may be begun by carefully analyzing consciousness into its component features and modes. It will then be seen that consciousness is based on language, in particular its ability to form metaphors and analogies. The result is that consciousness is not a biological genetic giver, but a linguistic skill learned in human history. Previous to that transitional period, human volition consisted of hearing voices called gods, a relationship I am calling the bicameral mind.
. . .
In this paper I shall first address the question of when language evolved, basing my answer on three assumptions. I shall then attempt the question of how language evolved, appealing to a principle of intensity differentiation of call endings and describing how this may have resulted in first modifiers, then commands, and then nouns and names. I shall then insist that this development is roughly correlated with the hastening sequence of archeological artifacts from the Acheulean to Neolithic times. Finally, since such a view demands an exceedingly swift evolution, I shall close with several possibilities of how this “leveraged” evolution, as I shall call it, could have occurred. *
Further than that. Even Jesus touched upon the idea according to the first century Gospel of Thomas:
(He also seems to be presenting an early version of William of Ockham’s Law of Parsimony. Nothing new under the sun?)
I’ve concluded their must be a spiritual component to our existence, because without it free will is impossible and would at best be an illusion.
Descartes retrieved the mind-body, world-self dualism via Christian metaphysics, which was enforced at the time. It would be like me learning how to make perfect croissants, and crediting Jesus for mentioning bread in the Gospels. I say the dualism goes back to Greece, where Plato “invented” the idea of the transcendental soul (spirit). This is a huge subject, and Descartes did not originate very much to state his case.
But how does a spirit or soul explain consciousness or free will? (Other than pure semantics–one is conscious because one has a soul; a soul is that entity which makes one conscious.) At best, it merely moves the inexplicable back a step; at worst, it multiplies inexplicable entities, if you take the stance that the existence of a soul still does not really provide an adequate explanation of consciousness.
In other words, the explanation would seem to be non-mundane.
I don’t consider that to be a concession of the inexplicableness of the question, only that it’s answer is beyond current science’s myopic view of reality.
From what I’ve read, it appears that consciousness is ‘created’ when the model of the world that the mind creates becomes complex enough to require the addition of a bit corresponding to the mind (or at least the creature carrying the mind around) - the “I”.
Neurologically speaking, people are trying to explain it as a whole ugly thing involving neuron loops and reentrant neuron paths and other fun things like that.
And now for more reading material:
The User Illusion: Tor Norretranders
A Universe of Consciousness:Gerald Edelman, Giulio Tononi
The second of these is pretty hard to read, which explains why my summary of the neurologically speaking bit is like it is…