How Does Evolution Produce Consciousness/Reason?

[Zarathustra]

So there is no meaning in DNA? It's just random molecular junk? It's a total coincidence that human DNA usually produces a human?

There is no meaning in the motion of celestial bodies? They just randomly move about without order?

Order, structure---no, they are not meaning, they have no meaning. Precisely correct.
There is function/process to DNA...ask any amoeba. Information.
It's not junk, coincidence...but that doesn't mean it's meaning.

The opposite of meaning is meaninglessness. DNA is not meaningless. I don't like to reduce meaning to information, but you seem to think information is important/sufficient. DNA obviously carries information. It carries all the information you need to construct all life on earth.

What do you mean by "meaning" if not useful information? It's not only useful, it's put to use!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Meaning is in the minds of the watchers.

Well, I disagree about beauty, but I realize it's a controversial position. I forgot if you have THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY like some of us here, but Deutsch makes a powerful argument for objective beauty, rather than subjective.

What exactly do you think watchers add to the situation? How can meaning be added to something merely by watching it? It either has meaning or it does not. Watching it doesn't change it (if we ignore quantum mechanics for now). You're basically saying that meaning is imaginary. But buildings aren't imaginary, and they are the meaning of the blueprint. Granted, buildings don't exist without builders, but that's why I brought up DNA. The meaning of DNA is the organism which derives from it. That's not imaginary either. Watching an organism doesn't add anything to this process. In fact, we've been watching organisms for 1000s of years without realizing that DNA is their blueprint. So the meaning of DNA has been expressing itself right before our eyes for 1000s of years without our knowledge. Watching didn't add anything. We discovered this meaning through a painstaking process of discovery.

No essential thing is in a Cathedral...what makes it MEAN is in the participating beings. It is endowed/imposed upon on the thing symboli-communicatively.

I'll grant that, but only because Cathedrals have symbolic meaning, which is different from what I'm talking about. DNA isn't just a symbol of a organism's blueprint, it literally holds all that information.

there is no way to GET to 1+1=2
UNLESS
you are a being capable of naming, creating, organizing, defining, then stripping and abstracting.

I'm not sure what the word "GET" adds to your point. "1+1=2" will always be true whether there exists beings to know this or not. It's no more non-existent than all the other mathematical truths we're currently not thinking about. They don't disappear merely because we're not thinking about them. Their reality doesn't consist of running through a human's brain. Their truth is independent of human subjectivity. They are objectively true, and this would be impossible if their truth depended upon being thought.

[Vraith]

Deutsch makes a powerful argument for objective beauty, rather than subjective.

What exactly do you think watchers add to the situation? How can meaning be added to something merely by watching it?

I might come back and get to other things when I have a bit more time, but for now I'll just say yea, I was in on the Deutsch stuff, read it a couple times now. I thought his beauty thoughts better than "meh," had some points, but not powerful.

And on watching...apparently just watching is enough to make make things happen...function collapse and such...
But that's an aside...I really meant an active version of watching---seeing, searching, collecting, and assembling/manipulating things and information.

All possible universes have extractable informational content.
Only universes with thinkers permit information to be transformed to meaning. And the thinkers actively MAKE it.

[[And GET adds, because thinkers getting/doing is the only way/place/time/context/state of existence where 1+1 happens and equals 2.]]

[Fist and Faith]

I still have a problem with the word "meaning". I've been arguing V's side all along. DNA's properties cause X, Y, and Z to happen. Saying it "means" X, Y, and Z will happen doesn't change anything about the properties. It's just the way we view those properties. If we don't exist, those properties still do; it's just that nobody is around to say there is meaning.

But I'm trying to reconcile that with what you said about one of the brain's primary functions being finding meaning. We could say our brain finds patterns and structure. Then it calls what it found meaning. OTOH, our minds are a part of the universe, and our minds contain meaning, so meaning is real.

[Zarathustra]

And on watching...apparently just watching is enough to make make things happen...function collapse and such...
But that's an aside...I really meant an active version of watching---seeing, searching, collecting, and assembling/manipulating things and information.

All possible universes have extractable informational content.
Only universes with thinkers permit information to be transformed to meaning. And the thinkers actively MAKE it.

I know you meant more than passive watching, but the point remains: how could any kind of watching add anything that is not already there? Either you see and/or discover something that is there, or you don't. And if meaning isn't there already, it's not there at all. Just an illusion. You wouldn't be seeing something that has just been added--indeed, created--by watching. Watching/discovering would possess magical effectiveness, if that were true. But if we're seeing something that isn't really there, then what could be the benefit in seeing it? A useful illusion? Why would such a thing turn out to be beneficial to our survival--hell, not just useful, but wildly successful beyond any other adaptation of any other organism in the evolution of life itself? At some point, we cannot keep crediting coincidence. It would be the greatest irony if this situation itself were not meaningful.

[I just realized how this conversation contradicts my signature here. There are obviously different senses of meaning. SRD and Nietzsche were talking about 'the meaning of life,' or 'the purpose of being.' I think you guys mean even another sense: conceptual interpretation. And I mean: the opposite of chaos/inexplicibility/formlessness, mixed with dash of purpose. ]

[Fist and Faith]

My problem is that you have repeatedly said consciousness is not derived from the laws of physics, because the laws of physics do not contain meaning. Now you're saying consciousness cannot be adding anything that is not already there, so the meaning must already be there.

Which is it?

[Zarathustra]

My problem is that you have repeatedly said consciousness is not derived from the laws of physics, because the laws of physics do not contain meaning. Now you're saying consciousness cannot be adding anything that is not already there, so the meaning must already be there.

Which is it?

I don't believe I've ever said that consciousness can't be derived from the laws of physics. I think that the content of consciousness transcends physics, but the "ground state" of being aware is a product of the brain, which itself reduces to matter and the laws of nature. There is something that happens when consciousness is produced that allows for a different kind of activity than we can account for with deterministic science. A "causal loop" is formed, where the content of consciousness has an effect that can't be determined by physics/chemistry, but is instead determined (to varying degrees) by the content of consciousness itself, which includes nonmaterial things like formal relations and essence (or meaning). I think the "causal loop" also works backwards to affect matter, so that consciousness itself may have been involved in the evolution of even "higher" forms of consciousness and eventually reason.


So, I do believe that the laws of physics don't capture everything. I think that there will probably need to be a radical paradigm shift in how we think of matter, in order for this process to have begun in the first place. I think the dividing line between mind/body must be a lot more blurry. And this means that the laws of physics probably are not as deterministic as they seem, and that the world is in some sense teleological.

I don't believe I said that the laws of physics don't contain meaning. That has never been my argument against reductionism. My argument always rested on the fact that the content of consciousness has causal properties that can't be reduced to deterministic, non-teleological science.

I'm trying to come up with a theory of what consciousness is, so that we can theorize how it came to be. We have so much trouble defining it in positive terms, focusing on negative characterizations like, "immaterial," and "irreducible." I think that if we describe it in terms of what it does, what it is useful for, its role in helping us to survive, we can get a grasp on its nature and its emergence.

So, I'm working with: consciousness is the apprehension of meaning in the world. That's the form it takes as a process, and the benefit it provides to survival. But it requires us to conceive of the world as having this "extra" layer of meaning . . . essence. And that goes right along with what Nagel says about our need to rethink the nature of matter to include "mental" with material.

[Fist and Faith]

OK. The content of consciousness cannot be reduced to matter, because matter doesn't have content or meaning. But just because the stuff the laws of physics operate on doesn't contain meaning, doesn't mean those laws don't.


What's the difference between consciousness and the content of consciousness? You said: Consciousness is always consciousness of something, an object of consciousness. And for something to be an object, it must be meaningful. Consciousness is never sheer, unformed awareness, not even for animals. So if the content of consciousness transcends physics, consciousness transcends physics. And all this from the physical brain, which is all matter and physics. How does my consciousness, which is not reducible to things like nerves, neurotransmitters, ions, and electrical impulses, which are operating according to their properties and laws of interactions, begin the process of moving my arm, which is reducible to those properties and laws?

The events already described (calcium entry, cross-bridge cycling) occur when a muscle fiber is excited to fire an action potential. An action potential is triggered in a muscle fiber when it is depolarized due to excitation at its synapse, the neuromuscular junction. Each muscle fiber has one neuromuscular junction, receiving input from just one somatic efferent neuron. And action potential in a somatic efferent neuron causes it to release the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh). ACh binds to nicotinic receptors in a specialized region of the muscle fiber known as the motor endplate. ACh binding allows Na+ ions to enter the cell, causing a depolarizing excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP) that is above threshold and triggers an action potential.

The very first step in all that, or in the process that leads to all that, so that we can move our damned arm, is a conscious decision. Consciousness begins the first of the chain of steps of ions and fibers and synapses that makes muscles move - without, itself, being reducible to those things.

[Fist and Faith]

Here's a couple quotes I think you'll like...

We will be showing that the spontaneous emergence of self-sustaining webs is so natural and robust that it is even deeper than the specific chemistry that happens to exist in earth; it is rooted in mathematics itself. - Stuart Kauffman

There's a mathematical reality woven into the fabric of the universe that you share with winding rivers, towering trees, and raging storms. - Eddie Woo

Woo said that after showing photos of a river delta, tree, lightning, and human capillaries, which all have remarkably similar patterns.

[Fist and Faith]

I'm trying to come up with a theory of what consciousness is, so that we can theorize how it came to be.

Is it not possible to find the most basic form of consciousness? How to approach it? Maybe we can pare consciousness down, until we arrive at the kernel. Start by taking away the highest level of consciousness - the human awareness of the future, as Kaku described it. What's left? Take away the next highest level of consciousness. What's left? We work our way down farther and farther.

The problem is, we can't tell when if we still have consciousness. Kaku starts with Level 0,

where an organism is stationary or has limited mobility and creates a model of its place using feedback loops in a few parameters (e.g., temperature). For example, the simplest level of consciousness is a thermostat. It automatically turns on an air conditioner or heater to adjust the temperature in a room, without any help.

Well... I understand that he's starting from the most basic possible starting point, and that's important. But it's not consciousness in the sense we're talking about. There is no awareness. There is no non-reducible activity. Cold makes the metal contract; the glass tube filled with mercury tips; the electrical connection is made; the signal goes to the the furnace; etc. (Old style thermostat.)

Problem is, we don't know where the first bit of non-reducible activity is. Where does it start? A plant is vastly more complex than a thermostat. But is any aspect of it non-reducible? Or "does every state of a plant follow directly from its previous state according to physical laws"?

Or is that only the case with simple plants, while more complex plants do go beyond that? How can we tell?

[Zarathustra]

OK. The content of consciousness cannot be reduced to matter, because matter doesn't have content or meaning. But just because the stuff the laws of physics operate on doesn't contain meaning, doesn't mean those laws don't.

Mostly correct. However, while matter doesn't have content, it does has meaning (in terms of order/structure/form/essence, not purpose).

What's the difference between consciousness and the content of consciousness? You said: Consciousness is always consciousness of something, an object of consciousness. And for something to be an object, it must be meaningful. Consciousness is never sheer, unformed awareness, not even for animals.

Wow, you are really reading closely! You are keeping me on my toes. I love it. This conversation has really helped me sort out my thoughts.

So if consciousness is always consciousness of something, then what is the difference between consciousness and content? Good question. Consciousness has a two part structure. There is the intentional part, the "aboutness," and then there is the object, or "that which consciousness is about." Another way to describe this twofold structure is, "looking at" and "appearing to."

So the content of consciousness is the object of consciousness, and the part of this process which is directed toward an object is what you can think of as consciousness. Husserl called it noesis and noema. So while these two are inseparable in principle (and in fact), they can be analyzed separate as two sides of the same phenomenon.

I think that addresses the rest of your questions.

[Fist and Faith]

Wow, you are really reading closely! You are keeping me on my toes. I love it. This conversation has really helped me sort out my thoughts.

I live to serve.

I don't disagree. But there doesn't seem to be much we can do with that. How can we study the non-contents part of consciousness without the contents? Kind of like trying to understand a building's architecture without being able to look at the damned building. "You just have to take my word for it. There's a building about a hundred miles east of here. Describe it to me."

Ok, maybe we can look at the building's blueprints. Where's the blueprints for my consciousness. Or consciousness in general. Is it the brain? That doesn't seem helpful.

It seems we need the contents to have any kind of discussion about consciousness. Which leads back to my question about the difference between consciousness and its contents. Maybe there's a theoretical difference, but I don't know how we could study the non-content part.

[Zarathustra]

How can we study the non-contents part of consciousness without the contents?

. . .

It seems we need the contents to have any kind of discussion about consciousness. Which leads back to my question about the difference between consciousness and its contents. Maybe there's a theoretical difference, but I don't know how we could study the non-content part.

I think it is useful to study both together. They can't ever be separated in practice. Consciousness is always about/directed-
towards/concerned-with something. That's why we can say that matter which isn't conscious has no content. Having content is a phenomenon that is only possible for consciousness.

However, we can analyze these separately as concepts or phenomena. And that means making consciousness itself an object of consciousness directing our attention and consideration "backwards" towards it. Yes, there is a kind of infinite regression implied here, but we can still note things about the structure of consciousness even as we're "chasing our own tail." That's why, for instance, we can say that consciousness is always about something, or that it is characterized by the quality of aboutness. That's a comment on the non-content part (noesis).

There is a branch of philosophy devoted to studying the structure of consciousness: phenomenology. It is extremely technical, but I think you'd find it interesting. That's where a lot of my points originate.

Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practiced in various guises for centuries, but it came into its own in the early 20th century in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. Phenomenological issues of intentionality, consciousness, qualia, and first-person perspective have been prominent in recent philosophy of mind.

The most basic form of consciousness must have this noesis/noema structure. There can be no aboutness (noesis) without that which it is about (noema). A thermostat definitely doesn't count! In order for there to be objects of consciousness, there must exist the possibility of apprehending a sense or essence (what I've been calling meaning). Let's consider a simple object: a disk. It's round, right? Well, not if you're looking at it off-axis. Then it looks like an oval. And if you look at it edge-on, it looks like a line segment. How do you know you are apprehending the same object from all these different views when it looks so different each time? Your understanding/apprehension of this object as a single object is only possible by you perceiving a unifying sense as you perceive the object. This sense includes all the various apperceptions you can possibly have of the object. No object is ever seen in its entirety in any given moment. Thus, your perception of a disk as a disk is larger than the particular perception you have of it in that moment. You are not only perceiving the particular shape presented to your sense organs, but also the meaning of that shape as an object which can appear to have many different shapes from different vantage points.

This isn't imaginary or added to the object. A disk is in fact still a disk even when turned on its side. Our consciousness isn't adding to the object, it is adding to our visual perception. This is transcendence, not mere
interpretation. We are transcending our momentary view, and our own subjectivity, which necessitates such limited views from moment to moment, in order to have a sense of the object as a unified thing which only ever manifests itself in these partitial views.

We "stitch together" reality moment to moment by understanding the patterns through time as manifestations of objects in relation to each other. And this process is what I've been calling "apprehending meaning in the world." Not only do we understand that a chair is distinct from a tree, but we also understand that the object we're viewing from one angle is the very same object from another angle. Both the distinctive nature (of objects in relation to each other) as well as the unified nature (of objects in relation to their individual manifestations) is the essence of the object itself, or the sense of the object of consciousness which represents that physical object.

A tree is a tree. It already has this unified nature without conscious beings stitching together the different views of it. And the unified nature as an object distinct from those around it is its essence or meaning. There is nothing mystical here. It's reality. Reality is comprised of distinct objects. And therefore it has inherent meaning merely by having inherent distinctions.

So consciousness is the phenomenon that apprehends this "level" of reality. That level was already there, already shaping the world, but consciousness makes it explicit. And by making it explicit, we can impose our own meaning, a human meaning, upon this world--not by creating it out of nothing, but instead by manipulating the meaning that is already there, bending it to our will. We turn trees into chairs. We turn meaning into purpose.

[Lazy Luke]

The problem is, we can't tell when if we still have consciousness. Kaku starts with Level 0,

where an organism is stationary or has limited mobility and creates a model of its place using feedback loops in a few parameters (e.g., temperature). For example, the simplest level of consciousness is a thermostat. It automatically turns on an air conditioner or heater to adjust the temperature in a room, without any help.

Well... I understand that he's starting from the most basic possible starting point, and that's important. But it's not consciousness in the sense we're talking about. There is no awareness. There is no non-reducible activity. Cold makes the metal contract; the glass tube filled with mercury tips; the electrical connection is made; the signal goes to the the furnace; etc. (Old style thermostat.)

Couldn't the same can be said about the chemical elements in the human body - although it starts to get complicated as one chemical reacts with another. If for example sulphur and magnesium were proreactive causing a flare-up in trace elements such as molybdenum, which in turn ignite phosphorus, kinda like "flame on"
- ingredients of consciousness?

[Fist and Faith]

But there's nothing outside of the laws of physics/the interactions of particles in what you're describing. Whereas there is when we're dealing with consciousness. The ingredients - that is, everything that makes up the physical brain - do not have properties that can explain, or even allow, consciousness. At least not properties that we are aware of.

[Lazy Luke]

Maybe too much importance is put on the brain when there are other parts that fit neatly together to make a whole. The world is a noisy place filled with an abundance of natural chatter. Surely it's fruitless to assume human design comes first.

[Fist and Faith]

I think it is useful to study both together. They can't ever be separated in practice. Consciousness is always about/directed-
towards/concerned-with something. That's why we can say that matter which isn't conscious has no content. Having content is a phenomenon that is only possible for consciousness.

I'm often misunderstanding. Often because I think one word is interchangeable for another. What's the difference between "Matter which isn't conscious has no content" and "Matter which isn't conscious has no meaning"?

[Zarathustra]

Content is always meaningful, but meaning isn't always content.

By 'content' I mean the content of consciousness. It is an object of consciousness.

Matter which isn't conscious cannot have objects of consciousness. However matter can have inherent meaning even if no one is conscious of that meaning.

[Fist and Faith]

Ah. Ok, I gotcha.

[Lazy Luke]

[Vraith]

Content is always meaningful, but meaning isn't always content.

By 'content' I mean the content of consciousness. It is an object of consciousness.

Matter which isn't conscious cannot have objects of consciousness. However matter can have inherent meaning even if no one is conscious of that meaning.

See...I don't know if this is just a perspective/labelling problem, but resolvable in some semi-trivial way--it could be--but I think it's a real difference.

I'd say: Content is inherent in everything.

an electron has content. the content of an electron is why it has the properties it does. [[in isolation, without other things to interact, the electron IS raw content]].

[[if "it's all fields" as some say, that changes nothing...the electron field is just the raw content]]
information is in it's interactions [for instance it repels other electrons...this is informational exchange...it happens physically through virtual photons.]

If the universe existed exactly as it does EXCEPT no intelligent beings, it would be bursting at the seams [just as it is now] with content and information...and have precisely, to infinite significant digits, zero meaning. If for some reason intelligence could never exist, it would have zero probability/possibility for meaning to come into existence.

meaning can only come about when a thinking/conscious being can see that information and BUILD/CREATE an understanding of the rules and things and manipulate those things/information on purpose.
Meaning is an ACT [almost always involving/requiring some portion of abstraction] performed by a comprehending being from and on the things/information.

[[It might be possible to design a way to measure and draw the line Fist is often looking for between conscious and not---also intelligence/not--by testing the capacity for abstracting. At least, that seems to be one necessary attribute/component]]

That does nothing to address what consciousness is, how it comes to be...only what it does. It creates meaning from content and information.
[[if the "illusion/waste-product" folk are right, it doesn't even do that. But I think they're wrong---one thing we definitely agree on is that consciousness is real and effective...it can cause things/create things based on things it has perceived/understood]]

[[OTOH, what it doesn't address is also true of many---maybe at a fundamental level ALL---things. We really don't know, in an essence-flavored way, what energy is. Only what it does/can be made to do/can be turned into]]

I don't know what it is, though, anymore than anyone else.
I favor [as I've said before], at least analogically, a conception/idea that the brain has [obviously] a hugely complex, multi-connected, network and layering and movement/flow of electromagnetic fields, and whatever else it is/how it works/might be, at least part of it is the experience/state/position of being INSIDE and PART OF those fields.
And that's why it's so hard [and may be impossible] to objectively fully explain.
Even electrons can't share content with each other...only the partial information through certain properties. [[and I'm pretty sure they almost never talk to each other about/through anything except charge.]]