How Does Evolution Produce Consciousness/Reason?

[Zarathustra]

Continuing with that thought . . .

Consciousness could be a special case of this self-ordering principle, this reflective/mirroring principle. So we don't have to say that there was a proto-consciousness, just a more general and less developed capacity for reflection/mirroring.

Michio described conscious beings in terms of their capacity to make models of reality. What is a model? It is the mirroring of some meaningful aspect of the environment in the form of conceptual meaning in our minds. We don't create this meaning by forming models, we copy it. Reality is causing conceptual copies of itself to be made by bringing about the beings who can do it. And it brings them about by "rewarding" consciousness via natural selection.

But the fact that truth, understanding, and anticipating the future confer survival advantages that can be encoded in DNA means that there is something about life that bridges the gap between meaning and matter (as I've been saying). We can now add to that description the point that this bridge is actually a mirror. The two levels are connected by the meaning in one context (environment) being copied/reflected in the meaning in another context (our minds). Meaning in the world is "calling forth" its own recognition in minds. It is producing creatures who understand it, drawing them closer to it. The self-ordering principle is Truth itself. It becomes important--literally the difference between life and death--once living creatures are in reality.

As always, I'm just feeling my way toward a theory. But if this is the right track, then we can say that this is where consciousness comes from, which in turn explains what consciousness is: the reflection of Truth in living things, a mirroring of the meaning of reality in the DNA of our cells. The survival context shapes the molecules that form us, preserving those that increase our consciousness like a feedback loop between mind and matter. A resonance of pure meaning is amplified through matter, a shockwave that spills living things in its wake, growing ripples of ever increasing intelligence as the minds that perceive reality come to know it in greater depth and more accurate penetration.

[Fist and Faith]

Well you're the one who posited proto-consciousness! Heh.

I think that whatever property that the universe has that makes consciousness possible doesn't makes itself known except when bringing about consciousness.

Yes. This is what I meant when I said "Maybe consciousness began with one tiny change that allowed the organism to take advantage of something that was there all along."

Consciousness could be a special case of this self-ordering principle, this reflective/mirroring principle.

Yes. This is what I meant regarding light. As vision and photosynthesis are special cases of light-aspected processes, maybe consciousness is a special case of some other process. Possibly this reflective/mirroring principle.

Now don't take this wrong. This whole topic is a huge mystery, and I change my mind about it every few hours. So, without any recrimination, I ask, have you changed your position quite a bit? I have gotten a very different impression of what you have been saying since the op:

Awareness must have been "built into" the universe from the beginning, in its very laws, as not only a possibility, but a likelihood. It's not enough to say that the most incredible thing in existence is a complete accident. That's not an explanation.

So, the universe must be in some sense mental and teleological.

And the very first thing Nagel says:

The aim of this book is to argue that the mind-body problem is not just a local problem, having to do with the relation between mind, brain, and behavior in living animal organisms, but that it invades our understanding of the entire cosmos and its history. The physical sciences and evolutionary biology cannot be kept insulated from it, and I believe a true appreciation of the difficulty of the problem must eventually change our conception of the place of the physical sciences in describing the natural order.

And not much later:

The idea that historical understanding is part of science has become familiar through the transformation of biology by evolutionary theory. But more recently, with the acceptance of the big bang, cosmology has also become a historical science. Mind, as a development of life, must be included as the most recent stage of this long cosmological history, and its appearance, I believe, casts its shadow back over the entire process and the constituents and principles on which the process depends.

Was anything that exists in the universe likely to exist, given the initial conditions and properties? I would say solids were darned likely. Metals. We could make a list of things that were likely, and the list would probably be fairly close to the list of things that we know are in abundance throughout the universe.

I've had the impression that you two are suggesting the mind was inevitable since the beginning of the universe. In light of the beginning of this post, I'm not sure if you were saying that.

Of course, it could be that it was likely. What exists in abundance now that didn't half the universe's life ago? Will consciousness be abundant throughout the universe in another 10 billion years? (Assuming it is not now, which we don't actually know.)

In both cases, the advantage came because the two organisms were able to take advantage of something that was there all along - photons.

But what was the "something" in the case of consciousness? What was it in the environment that this adaptation put to use?

As consciousness is not materially reducible, I'm thinking this "something" is similarly unlike things "in the environment." It's not a material thing. The fundamental forces are always there. But, although it's everywhere within me and within you, the strong nuclear force plays no role between you and me. Or even between me and the chair I'm sitting on. Just because something is everywhere, doesn't mean it is always acting on everything.

What could it be that doesn't effect matter that is not a certain type and degree of complexity, but grants that complex arrangement of matter a degree of freedom from the rules that matter must follow? A principle. A mathematical law that does not equal. A... I have no freakin' idea. I'm going to read what you said about a reflective/mirror principle again.

[Zarathustra]

Heh, my position is evolving, too! I'm not sure what to think, either. Like I said, I'm just feeling my way forward. Trying things on.

I think when Nagel talks about consciousness casting its shadow upon the entire process, he doesn't mean that consciousness was there from the beginning, but instead that the consequences of antireductionism are so strong that we have to revise everything. Because consciousness can't be reduced to the material, and yet it still evolved through natural processes, we need a paradigm revolution that will completely undermine materialism. An irreducible, immaterial phenomenon can't be explained by a material process. Something is missing. So materialism must be wrong.

There must be something about the world that creates immaterial things, and this can't be physics/chemistry. It must be a process that is itself immaterial. I personally think it is meaning, as I've been arguing. I think meaning is a "layer" on top of physical reality that can not only be intuited by intelligence, but also has causal effects that help to bring about intelligence. It can produce "feedback loops" where it mirrors itself.

It is almost like another dimension. Consciousness is perceiving a dimension of reality that would be completely missed if there were no beings there to witness it. This dimension is only accessed through knowing, understanding.

Now don't take this wrong. This whole topic is a huge mystery, and I change my mind about it every few hours. So, without any recrimination, I ask, have you changed your position quite a bit? I have gotten a very different impression of what you have been saying since the op:

Awareness must have been "built into" the universe from the beginning, in its very laws, as not only a possibility, but a likelihood. It's not enough to say that the most incredible thing in existence is a complete accident. That's not an explanation.

So, the universe must be in some sense mental and teleological.

I only meant that the laws of nature must have something about them that includes immaterial causes. The laws of nature can't be strictly material. And it must be a likelihood given the right conditions. Life isn't likely in stars or comets. But in places like earth, life can't just be an accident. I think there is something about the universe that "coaxes it into being," and I think that once it is here it helps to shape its own evolution.


Maybe it was too strong to say that the universe is in some sense mental. I should have said in some sense immaterial. But I'll leave teleological in there. I still think that's true.

[Fist and Faith]

Continuing with that thought . . .

Consciousness could be a special case of this self-ordering principle, this reflective/mirroring principle. So we don't have to say that there was a proto-consciousness, just a more general and less developed capacity for reflection/mirroring.

Michio described conscious beings in terms of their capacity to make models of reality. What is a model? It is the mirroring of some meaningful aspect of the environment in the form of conceptual meaning in our minds. We don't create this meaning by forming models, we copy it. Reality is causing conceptual copies of itself to be made by bringing about the beings who can do it. And it brings them about by "rewarding" consciousness via natural selection.

But the fact that truth, understanding, and anticipating the future confer survival advantages that can be encoded in DNA means that there is something about life that bridges the gap between meaning and matter (as I've been saying). We can now add to that description the point that this bridge is actually a mirror. The two levels are connected by the meaning in one context (environment) being copied/reflected in the meaning in another context (our minds). Meaning in the world is "calling forth" its own recognition in minds. It is producing creatures who understand it, drawing them closer to it. The self-ordering principle is Truth itself. It becomes important--literally the difference between life and death--once living creatures are in reality.

As always, I'm just feeling my way toward a theory. But if this is the right track, then we can say that this is where consciousness comes from, which in turn explains what consciousness is: the reflection of Truth in living things, a mirroring of the meaning of reality in the DNA of our cells. The survival context shapes the molecules that form us, preserving those that increase our consciousness like a feedback loop between mind and matter. A resonance of pure meaning is amplified through matter, a shockwave that spills living things in its wake, growing ripples of ever increasing intelligence as the minds that perceive reality come to know it in greater depth and more accurate penetration.

I like a lot of this. It's a principle, rather than a physical thing that would bring us back to material reductionism.

The problem is, it's an answer that's not an answer. The very thing that makes it good makes it bad. How could it work? The answer is, by definition, beyond our reductionism answers. And nobody has ever come up with any other kind of answer. Are we left with "This is the bottom. Reality has a reflecting/mirroring aspect. That's just the way it is."? How/why does matter warp spacetime? Maybe there's no mechanism. It's just the way it is.

I'm not sure what you mean by this:

...a mirroring of the meaning of reality in the DNA of our cells.

That's awfully close to saying matter has meaning. Of course, you couldn't be saying every possible meaning of everything that might ever be or happen is coded into DNA. Still, coding the ability to mirror meaning into DNA seems to be coding meaning into DNA. Would it have to recognize meaning in order to mirror it?

And yet, consciousness is obviously dependent on the physical brain. Which is the result of it's DNA's code. So, one way or another, DNA is coded meaning.


I was just reading back a few pages, and saw this, as you were talking with Av:

Whether it succeeds in its purpose does involve chance, but the genetic code driving it toward that future is not an accident, at least not in the random sense. Matter doesn't just accidentally clump into genetic codes that produce poppies. The origins of life--i.e. the very first DNA molecules--are still a big mystery. We have made great progress in describing what happens once nature has enough alternatives to start "selecting," but we have no idea how that first genetic diversity arose. In other words, there are organizing principles in nature of which we're not aware. Natural selection of random mutations doesn't get you all the way to the bottom.

IF the very first DNA molecules are the original of life. The whole point of Stuart Kauffman's book, which I've quoted a couple times, is that he thinks there's another, more likely, answer. Here's one reason he thinks it wasn't DNA:

Indeed, a serious problem assails the ribozyme polymerase hypothesis. Grant that such a fine molecule arose. Could it sustain itself against mutational degradation? And could it evolve? The answer to both questions seems likely to be no. The problem is a form of an error catastrophe, first described by the chemist Leslie Orgel in the context of the genetic code. Picture a ribozyme that is able to function as a polymerase and copy any RNA molecule, including itself. Given a supply of nucleotides, this ribozyme would constitute a nude replicating gene. But any enzyme only hastens the correct reaction among the alternative possible side reactions that might also occur. Errors are inevitable. The self-reproducing ribozyme would necessarily produce mutant variants. But those mutant variant ribozymes themselves are likely to be less efficient than the normal, or wild-type, ribozyme, and hence are likely to make errors more frequently. These sloppier ribozymes will tend to reproduce themselves with even more mutants per copy than the wild-type ribozyme. Worse, the sloppy mutant ribozymes are able to catalyze the reproduction of the wild-type ribozyme, creating still more mutants. Over cycles, the system could produce a runaway spectrum of mutant variants. If so, the original ribozyme, with its ability to faithfully copy itself and others, could be lost in a flurry of sloppy catalysis leading to a system of RNA sequences that are catalytically inert. Life would have vanished in a runaway error catastrophe. I do not know of a detailed analysis of this specific problem, but I think that the potential for an error catastrophe for such a self-reproducing ribozyme deserves real analysis and encourages some caution about an otherwise very attractive hypothesis.

[Zarathustra]

The problem is, it's an answer that's not an answer. The very thing that makes it good makes it bad. How could it work? The answer is, by definition, beyond our reductionism answers.

I think that we see reality doing this already with self-replicating organisms and self-replicating molecules. That's what reproduction is, a mirroring principle. Once these are introduced into the environment, they naturally build complexity. What is amazing is that this replicating function of molecules has led to a replicating function in consciousness where intelligent beings construct models of the world around them in their minds. Maybe this isn't coincidence. Maybe there is something about reality that naturally favors these kinds of outcomes. The meaning inherent in reality builds order over and above the order we see being built by physics/chemistry.

But you're right, I'm not sure how any of this would work. At this point I only have analogies to our own creations, how consciousness shapes reality intentionally. It's an ordering principle over and above the laws of nature. But this is a circular argument.

I'm not sure what you mean by this:

...a mirroring of the meaning of reality in the DNA of our cells.

That's awfully close to saying matter has meaning. Of course, you couldn't be saying every possible meaning of everything that might ever be or happen is coded into DNA. Still, coding the ability to mirror meaning into DNA seems to be coding meaning into DNA. Would it have to recognize meaning in order to mirror it?

I just mean that nature has caused DNA to come into being that encodes the information to construct organisms that are conscious and who create models of reality's meaning in their minds.

I do think matter has meaning, btw, as I've been saying. Again, I think this is what consciousness is, a perceptual feature of organisms that allows them to detect this level of reality . . . meaning.

[Fist and Faith]

It could be that this reflective/mirroring principle is the basis or order. If there is not chaos, there is order. And order is rife with repetition. The very first bit of non-chaos must be repetition. Yes? What else could interrupt chaos? If it was not something that had been seen before, it would simply be a continuation of chaos. It must be repetition.

So anything that is not chaos contains this principle. Sure, there's more to order than simple repetition. But the, shall we say, constructs of order, grand and complex though they can be, begin with repetition.

A mind cannot be chaos. As you said, there is no consciousness without content. And the content cannot come from nothing. It must be a mental reflection of something. At least in the beginning. I don't see how it can be otherwise. We have extraordinary mathematics, which are far removed from anything in the material. But they are built on simpler mathematics; which come from the initial observations of the material. We see a tree; then we see another tree. We see a turtle; then another. The pattern of 1 and 2 is in the material. And now the pattern is reflected in consciousness, just as the initial sighting of the tree or turtle was reflected in consciousness.

Not sure I'm going anywhere with this. Just contemplating.

[Zarathustra]

I was working my way back through this thread and came upon the following:

Ok, I suppose I am operating under an assumption, namely that there is no god or controlling power or whatever. However, if we take that as given, then by definition there can be no purpose, because the definition of purpose requires intention/whatever. If you're defining purpose differently to the way I am, then first we need to settle on a definition for the word. If we mean different things when we say the same thing, then obviously nobody is going to get anywhere.

Good point. I think there is both "hard" purpose, i.e. the intentions of conscious beings, and "soft" purpose, i.e. like the destiny of a seed to become a plant. I know the former is taken as illusory on modern interpretations of Darwinian theory, but after reading Mind and Cosmos, I'm no longer sure. In fact, I think that maybe consciousness itself evolves out of a more primitive purposeful quality of matter. Yep, I think maybe consciousness seeks consciousness, because life on earth doesn't really need it. You could have an organism programmed with behavioral adaptations be just as fit as a conscious organism, and not be able to tell the difference. Consciousness appears to be unnecessary, from a survival standpoint ... and yet we have it anyway. That mystery needs to be explained, and I don't believe it can be explained reductively.

I liked my idea of "soft" and "hard" purpose and how one may lead to the other. Why is this important here? Because "how did purpose evolve in the universe?" is another way to investigate how consciousness arose in the universe. Purpose seems to exist only in virtue of conscious beings, and neither consciousness nor purpose can be reduced to materialism. While people like Dennett can argue that consciousness is a kind of illusion, I believe it's much harder to argue that purpose is an illusion (at least the "hard" kind). When we make a blueprint and then construct a building from this blueprint, there is no sense in which we can say that the intentions/plans/goals of the architects were an illusory cause of the building. The end goal was very explicitly defined and then achieved.

But while a tree's "blueprint" is contained in a seed, this is just a metaphor. We recognize that it wasn't really designed, that it is just a marvelous accident shaped by natural selection. The order was built up over time without any end goal in mind. Trees evolved from simpler organisms.

But to primitive humans who didn't understand evolution, there must have been something almost magical about seeds and their inherent potential to produce full grown plants. With this "magical" mindset, everything in nature seemed to have purpose. And in some sense, they were right! Once you know what kind of seed you have, you can literally predict the future. You know what that seed will produce. After all, you reap what you sow. And this knowledge not only allows humans to transcend time, to look into the future, it also allows trees to transcend death and be reborn.

No wonder primitive humans treated such aspects of nature with religious/mythological reverence! In fact, this is the very point I want to ponder in this post. That religious/mythological view of nature comes about by mistakenly seeing "purpose" where there is none. It's an illusion, not really purpose. But it's one of the most USEFUL illusions humans could see. After all, we developed agriculture from understanding that seeds produce plants. And this is just one example. Seeing illusory purpose in nature helped us in many other ways, as we began to recognize patterns in weather, climate, terrain, animal migrations, celestial motions, etc. Seeing the world with a mythological eye, seeing purpose and design everywhere, was the first way we came to grasp the regularities that science now explains. We didn't need to understand them to make use of them, only recognize them as significant.

Therefore, there was a selective pressure for humans to view the world as though it had purpose. And viewing the world in this way required us to be more intelligent than animals, who (presumably) don't infer purpose in events. So! The illusion of purpose itself could have been the triggering mechanism to bring real purpose into being! Incorrectly thinking that there is purpose--by noticing how certain beginnings tend toward certain ends--could have spurred us to think in teleological terms, which in turn led to greater levels of consciousness.

Seeds DO turn into plants. This part is not an illusion. In seeing this, we have recognized the nonrandom quality of natural selection, the end result of a blind process, and in the process have removed our blinders. The "mythological" view of the world as purposeful and alive was a self-fulfilling world view in that it coaxed purpose and life into reality (in the form of us). Beings who could see these patterns--even beings who misinterpreted them in a religious sense--were able to penetrate deeper into the world around them. They made the world into the fantasy land that they imagined! They saw destinies in seeds, and therefore began planting them, and then seized their own destiny!

Is this a general phenomenon? Would any organism shifting into intelligence undergo this stage of thinking? Do organisms get more "religious" or superstitious the more intelligent they get (at first)? Is this something that all matter-awakening-to-itself undergoes? Indeed, is it what matter awakening is? The transition from the kind of consciousness that animals have into the kind of consciousness that we have is inseparable from how those organisms view the world. The shift is characterized not only by self-awareness, but also the ability to use reason to move beyond mere appearance into the deeper nature of reality.

What all this means is: what if we did not anthropomorphize the world, but instead the world "anthropomorphized" us??? What if it was the awakening of a religious/superstitious/mythological world view that coaxed intelligence and reason into being? Again, this would mean that the illusion of purpose brought about actual purpose. The illusion of design in nature brought about beings who themselves design things. It's not that we looked at ourselves and interpreted the world in these terms, but instead that we first noticed conspicuous features of the world, and nature selected those who could make use of this recognition in meaningful ways, turning us ever more into the people we are now!

So now the question is: what do we make of an illusion that can bring about its own reality? Does this have any implications on its ontological status? Is there a path here to work our way backward to infer that the world itself actually does have purpose? Is life shaping itself, guiding its own evolution, by use of feedback loops of illusion and meaning and reality? It is almost as if the possibility-space of all possible outcomes is being manipulated by life itself, turning the improbable into the probable.

Life is its own goal.
Meaning begets mind.

[Zarathustra]

I am rereading the section about reason now. I didn't sufficiently present the problem (for materialistic naturalism) in my OP. It's not just that we seem to have orders of magnitude more intelligence than we need to survive. It's that the evolutionary argument underlying that phenomenon misses the point.

For perceptions, we can reasonably assume that they represent reality fairly accurately because if they showed us illusions, we wouldn't have been able to survive. We need to see accurately threats (like tigers) and beneficial things (like the difference between a branch and empty space when we're swinging from branch to branch). So evolution itself presents a justification for the accuracy of our senses. Those who couldn't perceive accurately were weeded out by the facts.

But this can't be the case for reason. Reason is what extends and corrects our senses. Despite the evolutionary argument for accuracy in our senses, they are still sometimes wrong. We see illusions all the time. And we sometimes misinterpret them. So how do we correct them in these instances? We need an "impartial judge," something that doesn't depend upon this contingent argument for its validity. This is reason.

But if reason depends upon an evolutionary argument--like the reasonable accuracy of perception (usually)--then its validity is undermined. Reason is supposed to be independent of subjective bias or cultural indoctrination. The rules of logic are completely independent of any biological necessity. Mathematical and logical truths aren't determined by context. When we reason incorrectly, the thing that corrects our reason is reason. This could not be possible or trustworthy if the veracity of reason depended upon a biological explanation. One could imagine scenarios where it would be beneficial for us (from the standpoint of physical survival) to reason incorrectly, such as mythological reasoning that allows us to accept the religious rules pertaining to sex, diet, cleanliness, etc. But this kind of reasoning, while advantageous, isn't actually reasonable. The criteria is purely pragmatic, mixed with superstition. When reason is actually based on logic, the criteria are entirely different. It's true or false based on independent, objective criteria of the logical system itself, completely devoid of its effect upon our survival.

So our ability to think in terms of reason can't be dependent upon the same kind of explanation that allows us to trust our senses. Reason isn't just "good enough." It's a rigorous system of thought that allows us to penetrate illusions, a system that is self-justifying, not merely convenient. It is also applicable in numerous realms that have nothing whatsoever to do with biological survival. Indeed, the fact that it is helpful at all in our survival implies something very profound in terms of the relation between math/logic and physical reality. The fact that we evolved to reason is no less mysterious than the "unreasonable" success of math applied to the world itself. These are counterpart mysteries. It is equally unclear how we'd evolve to reason intelligently and mathematically as it is unclear how math is applicable to and revelatory of the physical world.

[Fist and Faith]

Sorry, Z. I've looked at your post a few times. But I haven't had the required time and focus to get to it.

Just read this:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why- ... sciousness
Helpful for me, even if it's old hat for you.

[Zarathustra]

Sorry, Z. I've looked at your post a few times. But I haven't had the required time and focus to get to it.

Just read this:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why- ... sciousness
Helpful for me, even if it's old hat for you.

Awesome! Thanks!

I liked this part:

But the intractability of the arguments has caused some thinkers, such as Colin McGinn, to raise an intriguing if ultimately defeatist possibility: what if we're just constitutionally incapable of ever solving the Hard Problem? After all, our brains evolved to help us solve down-to-earth problems of survival and reproduction; there is no particular reason to assume they should be capable of cracking every big philosophical puzzle we happen to throw at them. This stance has become known as "mysterianism" . . . the essence of it is that there's actually no mystery to why consciousness hasn't been explained: it's that humans aren't up to the job. If we struggle to understand what it could possibly mean for the mind to be physical, maybe that's because we are, to quote the American philosopher Josh Weisberg, in the position of "squirrels trying to understand quantum mechanics". In other words: "It's just not going to happen."

My response to this: we *are* like squirrels trying to understand quantum mechanics! How does this illuminate the mystery? Part of the problem of consciousness *includes* the question of why beings who evolved with 99% of the same problems as squirrels (e.g. find food, find mates, avoid predators, etc.) end up being smart enough to understand quantum mechanics--which has nothing to do with any of those things. Giving up on an understanding of consciousness based on the problem being too Hard by reference to our unfathomable intelligence seems inherently contradictory. Why is our intelligence a reason to give up? It's one of the things to explain! It's part of our data set. It's evidence. It's not merely the tool for investigating the problem, it's hard evidence we can use to solve the problem.

That might seem like circular reasoning, but it's what lets us see the problem in the first place. And seeing a problem is a prerequisite for solving it. It doesn't matter if our brains didn't evolve to solve such problems. That's another one of the problems! We already solve a multitude of problems we weren't "designed" to solve.

On the issue of panpsychism as a solution to the Hard Problem, I think it only solves the historical issue (noted by Nagel), and not the constitutive problem. Saying that consciousness is everywhere (in the right combinations of matter) doesn't explain how it feels to be conscious, it only explains why we'd be conscious instead of merely zombies. The question of why evolution didn't produce entities behaviorally identical to humans sans consciousness (which is theoretically possible or at least imaginable) would be answered by saying, "Because consciousness is everywhere already, not added to the zombie by some mysterious method." But that still doesn't address the constitutive problem of why I can't reduce my consciousness into matter. It merely postulates dualism everywhere, instead of just my brain.

The zombie question, framed as an evolutionary puzzle, was asked in order to illuminate the constitutive problem. And in that regard, it worked. But answering the evolutionary/historical question doesn't mean you've answered the question which it raised.

[lucimay]

OMG! an actual discussion on the nature of consciousness!!! hahahaha!
in Trade Chat on WoW I frequently shut down stupid conversations about obscene or stupid things by asking if we can now have a conversation on the nature of consciousness!!!!!! hahahahaha!!

but seriously... I like this part too Zar

I liked this part:

But the intractability of the arguments has caused some thinkers, such as Colin McGinn, to raise an intriguing if ultimately defeatist possibility: what if we're just constitutionally incapable of ever solving the Hard Problem? After all, our brains evolved to help us solve down-to-earth problems of survival and reproduction; there is no particular reason to assume they should be capable of cracking every big philosophical puzzle we happen to throw at them. This stance has become known as "mysterianism" . . . the essence of it is that there's actually no mystery to why consciousness hasn't been explained: it's that humans aren't up to the job. If we struggle to understand what it could possibly mean for the mind to be physical, maybe that's because we are, to quote the American philosopher Josh Weisberg, in the position of "squirrels trying to understand quantum mechanics". In other words: "It's just not going to happen."

my first husband, Ger, used to say to me "we are never going to know who built the pyramids or why. we are probably never going to know what happened to the dinosaurs for sure. we just have to be okay with NOT KNOWING." that's a simplistic way of saying the above quote but it resonated with me. doesn't mean i think we shouldn't TRY to know. i think we should at least think about it and talk about it. but it does give me permission to be a squirrel.




and please DO continue the discussion. I am enjoying it immensely!

[wayfriend]

there's actually no mystery to why consciousness hasn't been explained: it's that humans aren't up to the job.

How many times have I said that now?
10? ... more.
100? ... more.

This argument always reminds me of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and undecidable propositions. Because that I believe that some certain things are so fundamental to the way we are put together that we literally cannot examine them in a meaningful way. There will always be, and cannot not be, things we are incapable of understanding. We would have to be something we are not in order to even look at them.

Any system has limits to what it can do. And our mind is a system.

I am a "mysterianist" I find out.

[Fist and Faith]

Luci, this thread is on page 19, and it's not the only thread that gets into this topic.

I don't think the fact that our consciousness can solve problems it need not be able to solve in order for us to be incredibly successful is proof that it can solve all problems.

I guess it's also possible that consciousness cannot examine itself in the necessary ways to solve these riddles. As the eye cannot see itself. I'm not suggesting this is evidence that it can't. The nature of the eye being so different than the nature of consciousness. Still, that difference is not evidence that consciousness can sufficiently examine itself.

But those two things aside, I think there is legitimate reason to worry that we'll never figure it out. That reason being, despite all the years/decades/centuries of thought and discussion on the topic, there is not only no answer to the questions, there is no consensus on what the questions are. It's possible that this is out of our reach. All our efforts, and all we've learned about the brain, and we're not any closer to an answer than we have been at any time in the past.

The problem, of course, is that there is no objective subject. (That's funny. "objective subject") By definition, it is not an objective subject. Very difficult to find objective means of explaining it. And that's the way we learn about this reality, and thrive because of what we've learned. How else can we learn?

I agree that panpsychism, if true, doesn't tell us how it works. But it might be correct. Spacetime exists, and "can't be explained as the result of anything else." It is that which matter exists within, and matter affects spacetime. An electron is not the negative charge; it has a negative charge. What is the negative charge? It is not reducible to anything else. Spacetime and charge are aspects of the universe that are not reducible to the material. Maybe consciousness is another such aspect.

[Zarathustra]

If the consciousness problem is impossible to solve in principle, then we would need the principle which shows that. This would be analogous to Godel's theorem where he proved that math would always necessarily be in complete. Without that theory, it is just groundless speculation.

The reason I do not think it is likely that consciousness is inexplicable in practice, is that we have direct access to it. We know it is tied to the brain. And we are learning more about the brain all the time. I don't see how our intelligence could ever limit us, when we will likely possess the means to genetically modified ourselves to become more intelligent or to graft artificial intelligence onto our brains. There is no practical limit on our intelligence.

I disagree with the idea that the length of time we have been pondering the question should matter whether or not it has an answer. There have been many questions that took us thousands of years to figure out. And as the article states, for much of the 20th century it has been taboo to consider the question. We are just now turning our studies to consciousness with the necessary tools to ponder it in a modern sense.

[Fist and Faith]

Yeah, I can't argue with any of that. Just looking at all sides. You could be wrong about all of it. The lack of success in finding answers to these questions doesn't suggest you're right, after all. But you could be right. I'm certainly hoping, and will continue assuming, you are.

I've said a few times that I think an important thing might be figuring out what the least possible non-materially reducible activity is. Obviously, it's nothing that can be detected with any instrument. There is far more than the least possible in our skulls, but our instruments detect only the physical. It could not be otherwise, after all. So we can only arrive at the answer with our consciousness. Thought, logic, etc.

[Zarathustra]

The most basic structure of consciousness is the appearing-to of the appearing-as. Intentionality: the directedness of consciousness toward an object. Since there is no consciousness without an object of consciousness, this is the fundamental structure, the 'least possible non-reductive entity.'

[Fist and Faith]

But what does that mean? "the directedness of consciousness toward an object." Do you mean an awareness of an object as something separate from the self? Which might imply that there was first an awareness of the self. Or do you suspect awareness of other came before awareness of self?

[Zarathustra]

Fist, it means that unique among all phenomena in the universe, consciousness is the only thing that is about something else (i.e. the object of consciousness). Even self-consciousness is about something other than itself, since the consciousness I'm aware of as "me" also includes the consciousness of that consciousness, of which I can also be conscious, and so on . . . entailing an infinite loop like a dog chasing its tail but never catching it. But that's not to say that the object is entirely separate (paradoxically)! The object is part of consciousness, in the sense that it forms the content of the consciousness; however, in addition to the content is the phenomenon of being directed to that content, which is the possibility of something being "content" in the first place. So there are two "parts" here. The two are inextricably tied.

Let's back up. Rocks aren't about the ground. Seeds aren't about trees. Material things in the universe can be tied together in relationships (e.g. planets in the sun's gravity), but this relationship is "blind." The earth isn't "about" the sun. This aboutness is so unique, I think it is the beginning of the apprehension of meaning. It is the first step, the necessary precondition for meaning to be known. First you must have aboutness in the universe, the condition of one thing being turned toward another thing. And the entire (or sole) essence of that "being turned toward" is a connection of pure meaning, nothing else.

So for the universe to contain aboutness, this means that there are links of pure meaning in the universe! Consciousness, specifically intentionality, is a connective feature of the universe that transcends physical connections. As I said, a connection of pure meaning. And since (I believe) meaning is inherent in the universe already (prior to inquiring minds), consciousness is like a "loop of meaning." It appears when meaning loops back upon itself such that aboutness arises.

These links are real. Their immateriality doesn't make them figments. We can know what's going on inside stars, even though there's no way we could ever possibly go to the interior of a star, because we are able to apprehend meaning in the world. We put this meaning together into explanations that take us (or our consciousness) deeper into the universe, far beyond the reach of our senses. And we know these explanations for things far away are real because we can replicate the consequences of such reasoning locally, in our experiments. We can bring about material effects that otherwise would not have been able to happen because we apprehend this meaning. For instance, by figuring out what powers the stars, we were able to use that knowledge to build atomic weapons and nuclear power stations. Clearly, we latched on to some real features of the universe!

So the connections are real, despite being immaterial (again: connections of pure meaning). Thus, there exists within the universe not only meaning, but ways to link this meaning into loops. And the natural way that the universe links meaning into loops is in the form of living things. I suspect this is why we can assume that other lifeforms are conscious, and not zombies, because life is not just a survival package for genes, it's the universe's way to loop meaning. I suspect that lifeforms "wrap themselves" around this loop, or get wrapped up around it, rather than the other way around (i.e. lifeforms evolving until they are advanced enough to become conscious). I think a "meaning loop" is the "seed" and lifeforms evolve out of that. Thus, physical organisms might be like the accretion disc of the early solar system: a "whirl of order" that develops organically around an organizing principle, except the organizing principle here is one of pure meaning, instead of gravity. The genesis of consciousness, of meaning apprehending itself, is so unique, I think it gives birth to life. [This might be why reductive materialism has failed to give us an explanation for the genesis of life, because it is starting with the wrong point, assuming that life gives birth to consciousness instead of the other way around]

So this is similar to panpsychism, without saying that the entire universe is conscious. Meaning is everywhere, not consciousness. Matter has an immaterial dimension in virtue of having relations with other matter (and time, space, energy, etc.). These relations aren't material. They are meaningful. And the relations can relate not only to matter, but to themselves as well. When relations are related to relations, they become "about" themselves, and aboutness arises.

This is also why teleology is introduced into the universe, along with purpose and will. The possibility of something being about something, for meaning to be apprehended, allows for these other phenomena that seem to defy the laws of physics. (They don't really defy them, they "ride on top of them.")

[Fist and Faith]

It's not that I don't enjoy reading and discussing all that... . But it's way ahead of what I'm looking for.

"the directedness of consciousness toward an object"
When we're talking about the consciousness of humans, we can discuss that awareness in some detail. Even without discussing it, I feel my own awareness of things.

But when we're talking about a far lesser consciousness - in fact, the least possible consciousness, since I'm asking for the least possible non-materially reducible activity - how do we describe it?? How can we know where the least possible activity of this kind exists? We can't, by definition, detect it with any of our technology. Something with this least possible activity wouldn't be able to communicate and tell us. We can only speculate; imagine what the least might be.

But I'm not sure we can do even that. It might be so much less than us that it's like discussing oblivion. Close one eye and put your attention on the open eye's blind spot. Try as we may, there's nothing to say about it. What can we say about the nature of the first, least bit of non-materially reducible activity?

[Zarathustra]

Fist, I just described it! Consciousness, no matter how primitive, must have this structure, or it is not consciousness. Therefore, the least amount that we can talk about is *structural.* It is a special kind of relation of the universe to itself. The bare minimum feeling of consciousness is the feeling of directedness towards an object. The reason why this is the least amount of irreducable stuff is because aboutness is the bare minimum immaterial phenomenon of consciousness