BickByro, that’s an amazing story. I honestly don’t know, though, which side in this debate it supports.
I think you are underestimating the importance of memory to selfhood or consciousness, though. Someone with no memory at all would have no place to store the concepts of “red light” or “flipping the bird”. We’re not talking about waking up in a strange hotel room and thinking “Hey, where am I? How did I get here? What…what’s my name?” Because a person in that situation clearly has a functioning, if damaged, memory. They still have access to a whole world-picture of concepts–“hotel room”, language, the concept of having a name. Someone with no memory whatsoever, when perceiving a pencil, will not have any place to store the concept “pencil”, or even the concept “unknown yellow cylindrical object” (or the concepts “yellow”, “cylindrical”, or “object”). Furthermore, as soon as their sense perception of the pencil ceases–when they stop looking at it–they would have no place to retain the idea that they had ever had such a perception.
And yet we have considerable evidence that the interrelated capacities we call “memory” are organically based–you zap a particular area of the brain, and you can eliminate or damage specific aspects of memory. This inclines me against any sort of mind-brain dualism.
Up until my late teens, I was a not too frequent sleepwalker. I often held seemingly lucid, though if they were long enough nonsensical, conversations while in this state. I was completely unaware that I had ever walked in my sleep until my I did it one afternoon while napping after a long camping trip and scared the crap out of my sister. Later, when I woke up, she told me how she was really freaked out by it, but my mother, having seen this on numerous occassions, just sent me back to bed. According to my mother, I’d done it a dozen or more times during my childhood.
I also remember an experience similar to yours, Bick. I was about 13, and was one of the worst players on my soccer team. On one occassion, I fell asleep just before the game, or on the way to it. I do not remember playing in the game at all that day, up until about the last 15 minutes or so. I was “awakened” by the loud screaming of the crowd, just as I was coming in to make a shot on goal, from just outside the crease. I played halfback, and I wasn’t very good. It was probably the only shot on goal I ever took. My kick was kind of weak, and the goalie saved it easily. I remember being mildly surprised at taking the shot, and being in that position at that end of the field. At practice that weak, several teammates remarked what a great game I’d played. Too bad I don’t remember it.
The point is, while these are certainly different states from normal consciousness, it doesn’t really tell us anything special about consciousness itself… other than that it may be true that it’s not strictly neccessary. Though, as you noted, it does seem to have drawbacks when it comes to social interaction.
We can speak of all these different aspects of consciousness seperately, but as MEBuckner pointed out, there is plenty of evidence that some aspects have a physical explanation in the brain. Which sort of places the expectation that the ones we don’t understand much about will have similar explanations. Otherwise you will need a whole extra layer of explanation to explain how memory residing in the brain is accessed by “mind”, residing somewhere else.
For the benefit of all parties, Prof. Chalmers is not a classical dualist and neither am I. But science being where it is, it’s not too hard to conceive of consciousness being a completely natural (as opposed to supernatural) process that exists in dimensions we cannot empirically perceive. Chalmers doesn’t definitively draw that conclusion, by any means, but I use it as an example of the “neo-dualism” he’s talking about—no gods, souls or eternal lives need be involved.
MEBuckner: I’m not exactly sure what side of the debate the story supports either, but it certainly seems relevant… I was hoping to make a little more sense of it here!
You make a good point—and the “whole world-picture of concepts” is a wonderful way to put it. I tried to cover that base in my story above with the disclaimer “to the best of my knowledge I did not have any conscious experience of any of the events which occured while I was ‘unconscious.’”
That is to say, it may be possible that I was conscious (ie actively perceiving) the whole time but was not storing memories for some reason, so that when I “came to” it was actually just the “restarting” of my “memory motor.” Anything I was supposed to have learned that day would have gone in one ear and out the other, as you point out.
All this would suggest, however, that the only difference between a conscious state and an unconscious state is that in a conscious state, the “memory motor” is on. This seems like an oversimplification to me—for one, it is likely that memory evolved before consciousness, so that yes, memory is a necessary precondition to having a consciousness, but it is not the thing-in-itself. But in any case, the question gets really complicated when you consider that we can remember our dreams, which occur while we are in an unconscious state.
Actually, have we settled yet whether dreams count as a conscious or unconscious state? I’m actually inclined to say they’re a conscious state, because again, I experience something in my dreams (only because I can remember them?) whereas I experienced (AFAIK, again) nothing that day. And (AFAIK) nothing in non-REM sleep.
Sorry to seem loopy, but there are a lot of bases to cover here…
tourbot: I had never been a sleepwalker, for whatever it’s worth. That soccer story sounds pretty similar to what I went through, though, albeit for a briefer period. It’s rather eerie that we would both become more “in control” of our bodies as our minds disappeared—again, Julian Jaynes buffs take note: this is how they built the pyramids!
You don’t think these states tell us anything about consciousness itself, though? The fact that it’s “not strictly necessary” is fascinating, I think. Consider the question of whether other animals are “conscious” and it gets really interesting, no? Are we the only ones who actually are “aware” of our surroundings? Or are we just the only ones who think about it?
Again, the mind and the brain DO reside in the same place, and without a brain there is no mind. No argument there. But if we are, say, transdimensional quantum fluxes generated via some strange and completely natural process, that’s a whole different thing than being “just cells firing electrical charges.” And even if we found out that we are transdimensional quantum fluxes, we’d still be not a single step closer to understanding how we actually experience things (re: my copied post with Spiritus Mundi). And isn’t that part of what the OP wanted to know?
Well, you could also say that even if we determine that light travels at a constant speed, we’re no closer to knowing how it travels at that speed. You can always answer a how with another how, until perhaps you get to the final “how did the laws of the universe get to be what they are”.
The point is that research in this area is really in its infancy still. It took several hundred years from the time humans learned that the heart pumps blood until they knew enough to be able to build a replacement. Hopefully, it won’t take us as long to learn as much about the brain, but its too early to jump to conclusions. The best we can do is state what we know so far, which is that many features of human thinking can be traced directly to the brain, and often to specific regions of the brain. As such, it seems likely that all mental activity takes place there, including consciousness. How this takes place, and in the case of consciousness why, is still mostly unknown. Of course, a little cautious speculation based on observation can be fun. Chalmers theories are interesting, but in the end I don’t think they are more than a well thought out WAG.
Actually, this is the one thing that doesn’t seem surprising to me. The parts of the brain where conscious thoughts occur (or perhaps more appropriately, the thoughts we are conscious of) is much slower than other brain regions. So I’d expect reflexes to be faster, and possibly our skill at simple learned tasks a little better too. But I’d also expect you’d be terrible at things like math. Does Julian Jaynes explain how a pyramid could be built without the assistance of mathematics? Seems pretty unlikely to me.
So, where was I? Stuff required for consciousness: awareness, perception, the ability to store perception, the ability to integrate stored perceptions, self-awareness (and I do think dogs are self-aware)…and that is about as far as I’ve got.
The idea of self-awareness is crucial to consciousness, IMO. I don’t see that a being could rightly be called conscious without it. In order to act on specific instances of memories and memory perceptions the thing must have some rudamentary construct of self defined or would othrewise be a simple machine, no? Though my claim that there is no consciousness and we are all just simple (hah! well, not simple) machines has yet to go anywhere.
And I’m not sure how to formulate it apart from saying, “We’re just a bunch of molecules.” Though I have said some things along these lines before, I retract them now (as I did in the same thread I mentioned them, but just to be clear!): I don’t think our brains are part of a quantum effect. I don’t think there is anything conscious about us.
It is clear that the “bunch of molecules” that make up each and every human brain is truly a strange and wonderful combination of molecules. But remove the brain, and so far as anyone has conclusively shown, and you remove the consciousness (or what passes for consciousness). Alter the brain and you’ve a “sure thing” that you’ll also alter the consciousness. This isn’t suprising, of course, even if you do believe in consciousness.
Crap, got to go again. Shouldn’t be doing this at work anyway
So if we do indeed alter the brain we alter the consciousness. Now, it would seem obvious that the structure of the brain is indeed related to the “type” of consciousness, and perhaps on a higher level of abstraction a “personality.”
We could take the Hofstader route and discuss the idea that there are certain limits of self-organizing systems, after which the system becomes conscious. But again, conscious of what? If we give someone a lobotomy we reduce his ability to be fully conscious in the same way he was conscious before. But when a consciousness becomes conscious…what then?
I think that I will firmly stand here. Consciousness is not mystical, and it is a strictly physical phenomenon. It is rooted entirely in the brain and things that are directly connected to the brain for communication. Consciousness requires the ability to perceive; that is, to gather data. It requires a medium for storage of this data. It requires an ability to recall this data through filters (which I didn’t mention, but figure I outa) by selecting certain data “types” over others. To do this it needs pattern sensing ability. It also needs to be able to keep data, whether or not it is abstracted, filtered, or raw, in sequential order. Finally, it needs to be able to distinguish itself from its own surroundings.
Now, what am I missing here? How are you or I different from this? After all, by stating these things it seems that, given a decent amount of resources, a small team could put together something simplistic that could accomplish all these tasks (though, admittedly, it wouldn’t be like us). I think, by all rights, it should be considered conscious unless we come up with more qualifications for consciousness than that.
I think you have this reversed, actually. It is not by any means certain that you experienced a prolonged period of activity without consciousness. What we know (from your report) is that you experienced an instant in which you realized that you had no memory of the preceeding hours. This could as easily be explained by a phenomenon of memory as by a phenomenon of consciousness.
For instance, if I could operate on you know in such a way as to remove all memory of the past 3 years it would not mean that you had lived the past three years in an unconscious state.
tourbot: Nothing, when it comes to consciousness, is much more than a WAG…
But it is fun to think about. As for the quantum fluxes, I wasn’t trying to ask “another how” in the traditional scientific way—it’s more like, none of what science provides or could ever provide even gets close to the issue at hand.
Even if we knew for sure that consciousness was the result of transdimensional quantum fluxes, even if we could break down every single process in the brain to a flowchart accurate to the last neuron, we would know not a single thing more about how we actually experience things. In other words, we would be not a single step closer to knowing whether it would be possible to arrange the neurons in the same way and not end up with a conscious being. This is because consciousness is by its very nature not an empirical phenomenon.
Again for the record, I’ve never said that mental/conscious activity does NOT take place in the brain. We are located there, to be sure. But I’m sure I don’t have to point out how truly little that tells us about how consciousness works or what it is.
As for the Julian Jaynes thing—I’m just kinda joking around. My guess would be that certain “privileged” individuals in Egypt would have had math and unicameral consciousness, but would have kept it “hidden” from the bicameral proletariat. But who knows.
I still find it fascinating that evolution would EVER favor a trait that causes the organism to have less control over its body. Talk about your tradeoffs! “Well, now we know how to craft spears, but we just aren’t as good at throwing them anymore!”
aynrandlover: Self-aware is such a tricky term. It could mean aware of one’s consciousness or simply aware of one’s location and boundaries in the world (ie there’s a wall in front of me, so I turn to avoid hitting it).
You seem to indicate that the “deeper” meaning is necessary for “consciousness,” but that’s not at all clear. You say that without it, we’d be “simple machines,” but this is misleading, as pretty much everyone except me is arguing that in fact we are just, in the end, simple machines. This is to say nothing, of course, about the lower orders of life, which may well be aware of their surroundings without ever being aware of themselves.
When you say “I don’t think there is anything conscious about us,” you really lose me, though. Even if there is nothing mystical or supernatural about consciousness, surely it exists.
You bring up the notion of the lobotomy as a consciousness-alterer, and I have no doubt it would be. But without knowing how much we have to take away before all aspects of consciousness disappear, it seems like too tricky a point to tackle.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head with the next section, though: all the things you mention as “requirements for consciousness” are already present in computers and robots. So, are they conscious? It is possible, but hardly proven. The very fact that the Turing Test exists seems to suggest the opposite; we know instinctively that just “acting” conscious is not the same thing as being conscious. And again, we’re back to the question of simple vs. complex consciousnesses.
Spiritus Mundi: Didn’t I already tackle this issue? Yes, it is certainly possible that I was conscious the whole time but only regained my memory at the end of the day. Same could go for tourbot’s soccer story.
Let’s assume this to be true. First off, it doesn’t explain our more physical presences that day. And it doesn’t explain why I bombed my math test.
But okay, fine. Let’s look past that. The next question is this: if I was actually conscious all day, but didn’t know it, was I really conscious? Isn’t that part of what we mean by consciousness, that we are “aware” of our surroundings? It still seems to me that the “memory loss” scenario you describe must lead us to conclude that memory is the sine qua non of consciousness—I went from a state of unconsciousness (as far as I’m concerned) into a state of consciousness, and the absence or presence was the only difference. I’m not saying this is impossible, but it leads to odd ramifications.
But that’s not the question. The question is, if you operated on me now in such a way as to remove my ability to form memories, would I live the rest of my life in an unconscious state?
I’m entering this mess a little late in the game, but what the hey…
TheNerd:
Perhaps it’s a matter of definition, but I think a ‘mind’ requires ‘consciousness’. I agree that minds require brains, but I’m not sure I agree that posession of a brain necessarily assures the presence of a mind. Humans have brains and humans have minds. Great apes have brains and (I believe) great apes have minds (some experts disagree). Dogs have brains, but do dogs have minds? I’d like to think so, but I have no assurance that this is so. Earth worms have brains; do they have minds? I tend to think NOT.
Sounds as if someone has been reading Hofstadter…
Sounds like you’ve been reading Morevec, too…
This modeling scenario makes four huge assumptions:
We can and/or will know how to completely model a biological neuron.
We can and/or will know how to completely capture the state of a biological neuron.
We can and/or will know how to completely install a known state into an artificial neuron.
We can and/or will know how to completely replace a biological neuron with an artificial one without disrupting anything else in the brain/mind state.
We’re no where near to any of these milestones.
woodstockbirdybird:
I think this unfairly characterizes Penrose’s critics. Most of the critics that I’ve read think that he’s injecting unnecessary requirements by theorizing that consciousness occurs at a quantum level in the brain. Nevertheless, many of his conclusions have been tested and found to be consistent with reality and none of the critics have offered suitable alternative hypotheses to many of the questions he raises (except to say that sufficient complexity ultimately resolves all questions).
I’m not defending Penrose, BTW, but “Shadows Of the Mind” is an excellent read and should not be discounted just because a few critics find the theories over-the-top. There are many experts in the field that think that Penrose is on the right track.
MEBuckner
True, yet on the other hand, considerable disruption can be manifested on one’s physical brain, yet the mind be left intact… or at least, no outward indications of personality disruption. I happen to know a guy who lost a huge chunk of his brain in an accident. It affected his ability to control his body in some cases and he lost a considerable chunk of memory, however to all intents and purposes, he seemed like the same person. Incredibly, over the years he managed to recover a lot of his memories… which leads me to add to the list of traits required for consciousness… ‘redundancy’.
elvisf:
Brilliant! I’ll be stealing that, if you don’t mind…
BickByro:
Regarding your personal anecdote: Did you experience non consciousness or did you experience short term memory loss? How would you know the difference? Was it lack of consciousness or ‘other’ consciousness (e.g. a schizophrenic episode)? Again, how would you know the difference?
I would think self-awareness would be an ability to determine what components of a thing are doing the perceiving and calling that self, as in your second part of the “or” statement. The first, you might note, really tangles things up. Self-awareness is required to be conscious…but self awareness includes being aware of being conscious? So in order to be conscious, one must be aware of consciousness? I wouldn’t make such a strong claim. I see no reason to believe that a creature must have a sense of meta-awareness in order to be considered conscious (but I’m open for discussion, of course).
Surely there is a group of behaviors that we call consciousness; whether or not this actually entails what we think consciousness is is my problem. I see no reason to believe that it is other than a mechanical process, albeit an exceedingly complicated one in the case of humans.
Are you conscious? As an annoying of a question as it is, it is what I am stating. It is easy for me to question any component of what we are calling consciousness and explain it away as a series of increasingly complex interactions, so complex that it provides the illusion of free will, etc etc.
Where my problem lies is in considering consciousness holisticly, by showing how, say, self-awareness interacts with perception, and is being aware of being aware perception in itself, which again leads to some impossible circle (that is, again one must already be conscious to be conscious, it is both a requirement and a conclusion).
I am simply not prepared to accept, nor have I ever been presented with, evidence of a nonmaterial component to consciousness; that being the case, I don’t see it as anything more than a mechanical process.
You may have felt that you covered the memory aspect before, but your “current memory” of the experience is apparently blinding you to some alternatives.
Again, you relate forming memories to being conscious. Yet you call this troubling. Well, if it troubles you, don’t equate them. Nothing in your experience demands it.
You persist in saying both that you were not formin memories and that you were unconscious. Neither is necessarily an unreasonable assumption, but neither is necessarily waranted, either. A few other possibilities:
You were conscious and aware but could not process short term memories into long term memories.
You were conscious and aware, but in an altered state that interfered with both memory storage and retrieval.
You were conscious and aware and forming memories normally. The anamolous event is was the later memory loss.
You were experiencing an alered state of consciousness, but still forming memories. Those memories were lost to you when your state returned to “normal”.
Frankly, if all that happened was that you were unable to form long-term memories for a period I do not see how you justify calling that state “unconscious” unless you argue that consciousness is solely a function of memory.
JoeyBlades: In your case, I’d say better late than never. Good points, all.
Don’t know if you’ve been following the parallel argument on the Gnostic thread, but it seems to me we are really going to have to settle the “are earthworms conscious” question soon. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that they are, but that their consciousnesses are every bit as simple as you would expect from such a simple neurological structure. But I’m sure others would disagree…
Your 4-point Morevec deconstruction is brilliant, though—and I still maintain that even if we did reach those 4 amazing milestones, we still wouldn’t have explained how the “conscious experience” gets projected onto the “movie screen” of the mind.
Required? Definitely recommended…
[This one goes out to Spiritus Mundi as well]
I’ve mentioned a couple times that I cannot be entirely sure whether it was just my memory that slipped away. I’d like to talk to somebody who had a confirmed amnesiac experience and see how similar it was.
But I honestly feel that a simple loss of memory does not explain my inability to do well on a simple math test. I obviously wasn’t lacking the memory necessary to pick up a pencil and write Arabic numerals in the appropriate spaces on the page. I remembered to write my name at the top of the test. In fact, I remembered enough about how I normally lived my life that I was able to live it normally without anyone knowing any better. I should have been able to compute the numbers, even if I couldn’t remember doing so a second later, right?
In any case, the implication to me would still be that memory is the keystone of consciousness, if the only thing that happened to me that day is that my memory disappeared. Since I lost my ability to calculate properly, I clearly lost more than just memory. And since I couldn’t “tell” that I was even alive (not being able to trace a continuity of self from one moment to the next), I’d say that I failed cogito ergo sum and therefore was not truly conscious.
Well, if we follow the Julian Jaynes hypothesis, then I (1) was not conscious (2) was having a schizophrenic episode. So both can be true!
And besides, any consciousness other than “mine” would be considered, to me, a “lack of consciousness,” would it not?
aynrandlover
Wait! You’ve already gone too far! There is a big difference between (1) being able to perceive the distinction between your body and the universe around you and (2) calling the perceiver ‘self’. Suddenly we are back to “in order to be conscious, one must be aware of consciousness.”
You might not think you’re making a claim for the necessity of meta-awareness, but it sure looks like that’s what you’re doing.
Still unclear on this one. If you think you are conscious, if you can meaningfully utter and understand a sentence like “I am contemptlating my ability to comprehend the fact that I am aware of my surroundings,” then you are conscious. We just have to figure out what that means.
It’s as easy as me saying “it’s all God,” and just as effective. Just brushing the issue off as “too complex for right now but not so complex that Our Savior Science won’t be able to figure it out eventually” isn’t much of even a hypothetical argument, as JoeyBlades has shown.
Please explain this a bit more. Do you think it is a requirement or a conclusion? Do you think that because it seems to be both, it must therefore be fully illusory? I’m unclear here.
I believe Chalmers would say that in fact you have been presented with the evidence every day of your life—but that it is so absolutely ingrained in who you are (after all, it is who you are) that you don’t think of it as any “amazing nonmaterial revelation.” [Actually, he’d probably prefer the term “supermaterial” so as to distinguish from the “soul-which-needs-no-body” explanation of consciousness.]
But if you take time to think about it, your own consciousness truly is non-empirical. Its results cannot be duplicated or verified in any other “lab” (see Gaudere’s comments in the Gnostic thread about “color only exists in the mind of the individual”). Hell, empirical science’s entire purpose is to tell man more about the outside world—when was it ever promised to us that it would explain the inside world as well? Why do we assume it can/will?
But if you reject that, we come back to the old standby: given that (as intelligent Dopers) material, empirical science is the only thing we accept as valid, how could anyone ever present any non-material, non-empirical evidence that you would accept?
Spiritus Mundi: Playing whack-a-mole, now, eh?
What is troubling to me is this: as I stated above in this post, a lack of the ability to form new memories implies a lack of “continuity of self,” which I’d think we can agree is (at least) a major part of consciousness. So we’ve got a few options:
(1) My “memory motor” temporarily stopped, and therefore I lost my “continuity of self,” which is the whole of what we call consciousness.
(2) My “memory motor” temporarily stopped, and therefore I lost my “continuity of self,” which is a significant part of what we call consciousness.
(3) (this seems to be the implication of your suggestion) My “memory motor” temporarily stopped, and therefore I lost my “continuity of self,” but this did not affect my consciousness.
I honestly don’t know what I think the right answer is, but something in my gut tells me (3) can’t be it. I certainly welcome any objections.
As for your options:
Without a concrete idea of the difference between “short” and “long” term memories, it’s hard for me to answer this one.
Possible, but it still seems like the “continuity of self” issue comes up—if we are living purely in the present tense, are we truly conscious?
No chance. I wouldn’t have flunked the math test and I wouldn’t have punched the bully on the playground. Those are not things the “conscious and aware” me would have done.
This one’s fascinating—something akin to dream states, where we easily lose our memories of them upon waking up but can remember them if, say, we have a similar dream a few weeks later?
Could be. But a state of consciousness THAT severely altered (this is way beyond even a heavy acid trip, it sounds like) would effectively not be “my” consciousness at all. So I’d still say that “I” was unconscious.
You are the only one convinced of this. Obviously, if I was actually unconscious, it only makes sense that I would have no memories of the event. So we’re kind of in a chicken-and-egg bind here.
And in any case, that’s not “all that happened”—I also acted out of character physically (the only punch I ever threw was that day) and flunked a math test (also out of character).
I’m not sure—actually, it was you who got me thinking consciousness might be solely a function of memory. I don’t think that’s true, but it’s hard to say for sure. The continuity of self IS a pretty important factor…
I’m not so sure. Some autistic savants have pretty unusual (if limited) mathematical powers–multiplying huge numbers, etc. And I suspect the very best mathmeticians, ones with a real genius for it, find much of what they do something that, well…they just do. Consciousness and hard work to train the ability obviously, but not the whole, or perhaps even majority, of it–human brains have the ability to do math in probably much the same way they have the ability to do language.
It’s been awhile since I’ve read Jaynes, but I didn’t have the impression he ever said people weren’t conscious–“just” that the human standard mode of consciousness was radically different than it is today. So the part of the bicameral mind that could handle complex tasks like planning and building and math, did so outside of the individual’s conscious zone, and dictated as a voice that was other.
I’m not convinced by his arguments myself, but I found them downright fascinating.
…that’s non-falsifiable, non-verifiable, and essentially just a pretty word-picture that I just happen to like. Informed by Hofstadter, Penrose, Chalmers, and general too much time on my hands.
Consciousness is a fundamental part of the universe, instantiated into systems of a certain complexity and construction. In other words, it rises out of brains in motion as naturally and inevitably as a rock dropped, will fall. Although it arises out of physical processes, it is not purely an epiphenomenon, as its nature allows it to reach back and affect the physical systems it arises out of.
The universe is strictly deterministic, or more accurately, probabilistic. Given an infinitely powerful computer, and total information on the quantum state of the universe at any given point in spacetime, you could predict with total accuracy all the possible configurations in state an arbitrary distance further along. Due to how quantum mechanics works, that’s a very large number of possible states, and it is the very thing that allows free will and conscious choices.
The “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics is the correct one in order for this bit of the WAG to work–conscious choice works by consciousness choosing, moment to moment, between possible branches of its worldline. The choice between “I’ll eat pizza tonight” or “I’m going to make pasta instead” is your consciousness migrating down the worldline that results in quantum states that, on the macro scale, result in you either having pizza, or making pasta.
Obviously sometimes choices don’t work out–the worldline desired wasn’t part of the possible (or reachable) branches.
This of course is guilty of not saying a word about what consciousness is other than this mysterious something–which is about all that can be (right now) accurately said.
Perhaps. Memory is not a fully understood phenomenon. Experiments have shown that it is possible to interfere with a person’s ability to turn short-term (on the order of 15 minutes, IIRC) memory into long-term memory (able ot be recalled days/weeks later). Reports os senile dementia and alzheimers cases seem to argue that even among long-term memories information can be lost in s “LIFO” type of mechanism.
Your failure to do well on a math test might be purely memory induced if you were unable to access memories from the period during which you studied for the test. I am certainly not arguing that this is the case. I am simply noting that we really don’t have a strong reason to declare that you were not conscious during that period.
Personally, if I had to take a guess, I would tend to blame the aberations in your behavior and test results on a hypothetical anomoly which interfered with your ability to process memories (both storage and retrieval). A fugue state, of some kind. What I would not do is to declare that you were not conscious during this period simply because you have no memory of conscious activity.
This is where you lose me.
If the only thing that happened was the disappearance of memory you have no reason to decide that you were not conscious during the period unless you begin with the proposition that memory is the keystone of consciousness. This “implication” is circular.
I am not sure that we can agree on this, mostly as a question of scale. I don’t see any necessity (on a theoretical level) for identity to persist longer than is required to interpolate a situation and determine an action. Those elements would seem to be necessary for consciousness. Remembering “who you were” last week does not.
Now, perhaps you want to argue about whether you were the “same” consciousness during that time. If so, let me point out that even if you had detailed memories of every moment during that day, it would still not guarantee that you were the “same” perceptive consciousness. If I drink enough I act aberantly and might experience blackouts. Do I have continuity of identity through the period of my binge?
I don’t object to any of your options. I have no idea why you object to the idea that continuity of experience is not a prerequisite for consciousness. In cases of severe amnesia a person mighht suffer a radical discontinuity of experience, beginning an entirely new life. Does that mean they were not conscious for the first one?
It seems to me that “conscious but not yourself” is a reasonable description (not the only reasonable description) of your behavior that day.
I would say that we live purely in the simple past.
Why wouldn’t we be? Living in the present (or past) does not prevent us from experiencing memory. Continuity of self is nothing more than our most recent interpretation of our memories. If, through some hypothetical magic, I replcaed all of your memories with my own then you would feel a “continuity of Spiritus” indistinguishable from my own. Who you were is never more than the best guess of who you are.[sup]1[/sup]
Again – those are not things that you would have done under the normal conditions of your consciousness (as you recall them now). I have already discussed ideas of self and altered consicousness, so let me ask: has your entire life been so bound by normalcy that you have never taken an uncharacteristic action?
Again, that is a conclusion about “I”, not a conclusion about consciousness.
You mistake my raising a possibility for conviction that I know the answer. I would have thought raising several other possibilities in the same post was sufficient to dispel that notion.
The data we have is: failure to remember, small deviations in behavior. “I was unconscious” is a hypothesis to explain that data. It is not a chicken-egg situation unless you assert that no other hypothesis can explain the data.
[sup]1[/sup][sub]While I think the simple past is a more accurate tense to describe our experience of consciousness, it make the syntax ugly when discussing recalled memories. The metaphor of the “ongoing present” is useful here.[/sub]
Calling the perceivers "self"
We could call it “orange” or “vorpal” or “turlingdrome” for all it matters. My point was that consciousness needs to be able to seperate things that gather data from things that don’t gather data. I chose to call it self to get the point across better, though that was obviously in error.
Evidence of consciousness
I would be satisfied with a good explanation, nevermind empirical evidence (though if your explanation would allow for empirical evidence then by all means, of course). I would be prepared to at least pursue even God further(as another example) if anyone ever presented me with a solid argument as to why I should; apart from that, I’ll stick with Eris. She knows what’s up.
I do believe consciousness exists; I also believe consciousness is a mechanical process. There is nothing unmechanical about it. It is most likely as deterministic as the rest of the universe (sorry, I won’t elaborate here, my determinism vs free will arguments may be found elsewhere or started again if you prefer). I believe this because: it is refutable; it does not require additional postulations about existence that would themselves need to be validated. The problems with it: it doesn’t “feel” right, we feel like we really are conscious in a more-than-mechanical way; the mechanics themselves have not been explained; it is not a predictive theory as it stands (though that could be expanded upon, I think).
That won’t be necessary, because I happen to agree with you and Drastic on that point (in fact, I agree with Drastic on pretty much everything, it looks like).
But a “true” free will does not, to me, seem to be a necessary part of a Chalmers-esque trans-physical consciousness.
Spiritus: Considering the rave reviews you gave my last post in the Gnostic thread, I question the utility of responding to you, but I’m the type who just can’t help myself, so here goes…
It’s the studying for the test part that gets me—with math, you’re not really memorizing answers (as opposed to “What is the capital of North Dakota”), you’re learning a technique. That particular test was just the common elementary school math drill, so the extent to which I did poorly should not have been a matter of whether I could remember having studied for the test.
If I was truly conscious during that period of time, and I am also truly conscious now, then the only difference we can imagine between the two states is that, in this one, I have memory. If that’s the only difference, I’d have to say that, functionally, without a memory, you may be conscious, but you won’t know it. And if you don’t know it, it doesn’t seem to count as being conscious. But I’m guessing you see it differently.
With only a very few exceptions (the hard-wired reflex actions), I’d maintain that some amount of memory would still be required in such circumstances. And if we deny me my memory, well, there you have it.
I’d say yes during the aberrant behavior, no during the blackouts.
No, of course not. It just means that one consciousness ended and another began. But that’s a big change, basically equivalent to death.
My consciousness, as far as I am concerned, is my self—I have no identity of self outside of my consciousness. So even if my body was conscious that day, as you suggest, “I” wasn’t conscious.
Then if you take away memory (ie the past), doesn’t that mean you are no longer conscious (or “living,” as you put it here)?
The way I meant it, it does. If you don’t have access to the past (ie you live strictly in the present), how do you experience memory?
I couldn’t agree more. But then “my” consciousness would cease to exist. That is significant to me.
Violence is simply not in my nature; I’m so feeble physically that I have an inherent fear that if I didn’t literally kill my opponent with a suckerpunch, I’d be utterly defenseless against his ensuing reaction. So I don’t punch people. And it’s always been that way. It is a coincidence too large to brush away that my bout with “quasi-unconsciousness” was the only time I’ve thrown a punch in my life. And again, if my consciousness was that severely altered (we’re not talking about having a buzz on here), then it wasn’t really my consciousness, was it?
This, I think is the crux of the problem. You are overestimating the importance of consciousness. Do you really think that if all your nonconscious thoughts were removed, you would still be you? I think you are very very wrong about that. In fact, the vast majority of your thoughts are not conscious. A person with their nonconscious thoughts removed would resemble a zombie more than a person with their conscious thoughts removed!
I assume that by “nonconscious thoughts” you mean such things as “heart: beat,” “stomach: digest,” “pupils: dilate” and not some sort of Freudian subconscious thing.
Removing the automatic functions of the brain is obviously going to cause problems, as we’ve already come to a rough agreement that consiousness emerges from the electrical interactions of neurons. Take away the brain’s ability to nourish itself with blood by making the heart beat and yes, you are screwed.
But remember: I did not say “I am my consciousness.” I said “‘I’ is my consciousness.”
‘I’ here refers to my sense of distinction between myself and the outside world; or perhaps more appropriately, the difference between being in a waking, walking, talking coma (ie Chalmers’ zombie) and being what we call conscious. I wish there were a better way to put it than ‘I’ but I’m not sure there is.
Chalmers theories are interesting, but in the end I don’t think they are more than a well thought out WAG.