How Does Evolution Produce Consciousness/Reason?

[Skyweir]

[Fist and Faith]

On another note... Consciousness can't be defined. At least I haven't been able to find a definition. And it can't be detected. It is not (or so you convinced me) reducible to the properties of particles and laws of physics. We don't understand much of anything about it, afaict. It exists in the natural world, yet, as though it was supernatural, it is not subject to scientific study. Now, to make it even worse, Nagel wants us to come up with theories about how it exists. Theories that will be even less testable and verifiable than consciousness itself it.

I think you've misread Nagel.

Have I ever said anything to suggest I had read Nagel correctly?? I've tried twice, so far. I'm about to start again. It's very complicated and detailed, with subtle differences everywhere, so I don't always remember what he said earlier well enough to know how it's different from what he's saying later. But I'm a lazy reader and student, and I'm going to try to put more into it this time. Even *shudder* take notes and make an outline!

He is proposing that we develop new theories of matter that start from the perspective that matter can become conscious. This avoids problems of reductionism, because consciousness wouldn't be reduced to unconscious matter/laws, but would instead be comprised of elements that are in some sense "pre-conscious" or mental from the beginning. He's saying that the view that consciousness happened at the end, instead of being in some sense being part of the universe all along, doesn't make sense. We know that mind and body interact. There must be some basis for this interaction. So, in breaking down the strict conceptual divide between "mind" and "body," there must be room for the idea that mind and matter aren't really existentially separate.

Not only must we do this in the ontological sense of "substance 1" and "substance 2" (i.e. dualism: mind + matter), but also in the historical sense, i.e. how consciousness evolved from matter. The whole issue is problematic on both levels. Based on reductionism, neither of these issues make sense.

But this only means that we must give up reductionism, not science. I think that smart people could come up with theories that would be testable based on this new non-reductive paradigm.

Well, that all makes sense. I guess I don't have to try reading it again.

So,
Yes, matter can become conscious. It has done so, so it can't be denied.
No, consciousness cannot be reduced to the laws of physics and properties of particles that we are familiar with.
Yet, consciousness is a property of matter. It cannot be otherwise.
Therefore, there are more properties of matter than we are aware of; or there is a way of viewing it that gives a fuller picture.

[Skyweir]

[Vraith]

Yes, matter can become conscious. It has done so, so it can't be denied.

No, consciousness cannot be reduced to the laws of physics and properties of particles that we are familiar with.

Yet, consciousness is a property of matter. It cannot be otherwise.

Therefore, there are more properties of matter than we are aware of; or there is a way of viewing it that gives a fuller picture.

On the first--- I agree it has been done. But there are definitely people who can/do deny it.

On second and third...our familiarity/lack is the problem here, though, and that leads directly to 4th...so that's fine. By which I mean: sometimes we beings make this division more mysterious/inexplicable than it needs to be.
I don't think we have no idea AT ALL how consciousness could be.
For one thing, all the things we DO know---all those particles/properties/laws are fundamentally part of it, and that's a big chunk of known. [[in the loose non-absolutist process sense of knowing, of course, and/but that would...[[[[GIANT journey into off-topic weeds taken out here]]]].
And I think we have a pretty good idea systematically/structurally.
Like this---riffing on Z's "pre-conscious"---
From at least the first instant of the universe and through most of a billion years, there was no water. There wasn't even oxygen. In the really early stuff, there wasn't even hydrogen. Or [earlier] protons/electrons. And yet, from at least the first instant, there WAS "pre-aqueousness."
And we understand that pretty well.
I think we've covered MOST of the path/process to knowing consciousness, and the hard part is behind us.
Sorta like "darkest before the dawn,"---most confusing before the answer. [which isn't to say taking that last step won't be revelatory/revolutionary, cuz is sure as hell will be...I just have the impression that there is a general mood/feeling that we're still totally lost in the woods on this, but we're really on a cusp...or maybe people feel like we're waiting for the train, but really the booster is about to ignite---]

[Fist and Faith]

You might say we've been on the cusp for centuries. Consciousness is a part of this universe. It is dependent on - it may even be - the physical. It exists when certain physical things are present. Change the physical, and you change, or destroy, the consciousness. People have been trying to figure it out forever. Maybe it's just one specific idea that has not yet been conceived. Maybe it could have been conceived at any point in the past, but wasn't. So still on the cusp.

[Vraith]

Maybe it could have been conceived at any point in the past, but wasn't. So still on the cusp.

Totally disagree. It could not have been conceived, but now or very soon it can. We have learned more about reality as a whole in the last 50 years or so than in all the thousands before. More about the mind in the last 10 or so than all of history. And most fields are in high exponential growth. Now is nothing like the past.

[Fist and Faith]

I said "maybe". It's certainly possible that it can't be figured out without understanding certain things. Einstein couldn't have conceived the things he did before certain facts were known. Here's hoping we have both all the facts we need and someone who can figure it out. My guess is it won't be an obvious thing that any number of people with the right facts will be able to figure out. I think it'll take an Einstein, coming up with a bizarre idea.

[Skyweir]

Or Hawkings PROVING the existence of multiverses .. surely that would change how we perceive everything.

I see that the evolution through intelligence has been a cumulative experience.. in that each discovery becomes a building block for the next. Where we are today may one day be described in relatively ignoble terms .. compared with what will be known and proven in a decade hence, or a century hence

Its an exciting time to be alive ... and to learn ..

[Fist and Faith]

Didn't say "unnkowable". Said "empirically unverifiable" which, in my context here, would equate to something like "materially irreducible".

But that's prollly enuf about that, at least for me.

On the second: it ain't enough for me. The reason is part of following:

On first: you can say they're a mix of synonyms and mislabeling--I don't care about that...though they're really all the same for people most of the time, so I'll do this, which I've tried to do before--don't think you're a target, you're just the instantaneous moment, and many who don't agree with you about anything still make this thing go on....

Do you know the 3 body problem? Its pure, "materially maximally reduced" state can be "reduced to" this:
They have NO properties, obey NO rules except 1.
If there are more than two of them, you are fucked---cuz if you don't know EVERYTHING, then you know NOTHING [in the "system"/"universe" of people who think "materially irreducible" is anything other than a Very Certain Person/Perspectives "proof"/"counterpoint" of something.]

When everyone so far---you, Z, Fist, lately, but everyone generally---says "materially irreducible" they CAN'T be right...even though they all intend to mean slightly different things.

Or, more accurately, you can't KNOW you're right, and "reduce" things to the, for some reason dismissive/limited/insulting, label "materially irreducible" [[read how you want, a restricted infinity or unrestricted finity, blather]].

As if "only" applies to "material" as a meaningful description when you don't KNOW, aren't even CLOSE to knowing what "material" means.
[[The real world has way more than the one property, and nearly infinitely more bodies than the insoluble 3 body]]
As if "reducible" is a meaningful description when you reduce a force/rule to ONE effect and STILL can't know what effect it has.
[[the real world has more than one force, with more than one effect, most of which aren't even close to understood...and they don't act in isolation.]]

Materially irreducible, in the innocent usage, is a translation of "I'm kerfluffled, and so is everyone I know..." In the power/political/in-groupifying sense is a semi-smart persons translation of "common sense"---meaning a plati-tool of zero effect other than demeaning or casting out/labeling other people.

Most of the time I'm not sure I know what you're saying. This is no exception. But if I do understand, here's my response...

In my Free Will thread, I had said everything can be seen to be, at the root, properties of particles and how they interact. Solidity and hardness being the result of the electrons of two objects repelling each other, for example. Life processes can be reduced to chemical processes; which are the result of the molecular structures; which are the result of the atomic structures...

Z asked how thoughts about mathematics can be reduced to properties of particles. How does atomic structure lead to x, then y, then z, resulting in me, say, hearing someone say there are twenty cows, and me thinking that, with four legs each, there are eighty legs? What interaction of electron shells, or anything else, makes that happen? And if it IS such a process, how can I ever come up with the wrong answer?

[Vraith]

Most of the time I'm not sure I know what you're saying. This is no exception. But if I do understand, here's my response...

I was trying to deconstruct and tease out irreducible+material. People use it in different ways to mean different things. Wos uses it somewhat and importantly differently than a Modern American Fundamentalist. Z mostly discusses it from its hard philosophy basis. It seems to me you use it---mostly--- as a place-holder/marker for "physical structure/process we don't know YET," and related things/gaps.

But I don't like the idea/terminology/use because I don't think any perspective/interpretation of it escapes a fundamental/foundational quality/implication: that there is "something" [[equivalent to "magic"]] that causes, has effects, outcomes, influence on every material thing, but is itself independent, NOT a property or force or process or result that can ever be accounted for by, through, or in the material world/explanations.

Most of the issues/questions you raised/mentioned in last post and that others have in others are hard questions, legitimate inquiries, and I personally like working on them, thinking hard or launching flights of fancy, just playing around in it---but trying to keep hold of some ground/anchors/solid infomation at the same time.

But the concept I'm objecting to cannot, will not, does not address them or point towards a path to follow, any exploration for explanation. It removes them from inquiry---or allows any fiction that fits OTHER things to be "true."
Like this: imagine that we couldn't conceptualize a reality, and then invent tools, to discover how lead is/can/might be turned to gold. Without those things, magic and the philosopher's stone [[and many other things]] are every bit as reasonable/real as protons/neutrons/strong and weak forces AS FAR AS WE CAN TELL.
Not all the views ARE as real/actual, of course---but that doesn't matter if we can't tell the difference.
In a materially irreducible universe, in the end we literally can't tell the difference between consciousness related to particles and laws and consciousness as a soul given us by a Magical Being.

[Zarathustra]

Ha, I struggle to read Vraith sometimes, too. A few less parenthetical phrases and a little less ranting might make it easier.

Z asked how thoughts about mathematics can be reduced to properties of particles. How does atomic structure lead to x, then y, then z, resulting in me, say, hearing someone say there are twenty cows, and me thinking that, with four legs each, there are eighty legs? What interaction of electron shells, or anything else, makes that happen? And if it IS such a process, how can I ever come up with the wrong answer?

Your last question is the key insight. If our neurons are doing math by firing according to mathematical rules, then how could they ever be wrong? Why is math so hard to learn? If our abiliy to think mathematically comes from nothing else than neurons' inescapable property of following deterministic, physical laws that are themselves mathematical, then it should just come naturally. We couldn't get the wrong answer any more than an asteroid could get the "wrong" orbit (i.e. not follow the path we can calculate with math).

When doing math, our thoughts follow the formal relations themselves, chasing after answers that are dictated by a structure that has nothing do with the neurons that are firing to enable the consciousness that is tracing out these formal patterns. That formal structure is self-consistent even when our feeble brains get the answer wrong. It is independent of our brains. And when our thoughts explore it, follow its paths, they are not following any "programming" that preexists in our neurons. They are tracing out a preexisting "terrain."

This should be obvious to us, because otherwise we'd never invent anything new. If all our thoughts are deterministic, if they simply occur because they are following the laws of physics, then every new invention was already in the brains of those who thought them; they were predetermined to have those novel insights. Determined by what? By the laws of physics? The laws of physics just decided to give Einstein the insights into the laws of physics itself?

Unless the universe itself is already aware of itself (a possibility I'm not opposed to, in some sense), it makes little sense to think that the laws of physics are going to produce creatures that are causally determined to deduce those very laws. Unless the universe is guiding itself to self awareness--a process that would negate determinism--it seems unlikely that any blind, deterministic physical process would inevitably lead to a formal representation/understanding of this very process within that process.

Everyone says we can't define consciousness. Some (like Dennett) want to say this (as well as many other factors) means that we aren't really conscious. But even if you take every single bit of immaterialism out of consciousness--even the neutral concepts like qualia and intentionality--you have to say at the very least that consciousness is an end product of physical laws that have led to a formal/conceptual understanding of those laws. You can't avoid making this bare observation without undermining the very insights that led us to eliminating consciousness in the first place. Without a formal/conceptual understanding of the laws of nature, we never would have reduced our mind to brain functions. So SOME understanding of physics/chemistry/biology/neurology is occurring. The question now is ... occurring to whom or what? If it's not occurring to me, then it's occurring to my brain, to my neurons, to my atoms.

How is that any less incredible than just saying it's occurring to my consciousness?

Either my atoms are conscious, or my atoms make up a consciousness that transcends them. Or these are two ways of saying the same thing.

Dennett et al want to use Descartes's insight to make the opposite conclusion, to use our thoughts ("I think") to disprove that there is a thinker ("therefore I am not"). But consciousness is required here to disprove consciousness!

[Vraith]

Ha, I struggle to read Vraith sometimes, too.
[[SEPARATION]]]
A few less parenthetical phrases and a little less ranting might make it easier.

HAH! [on the first...] If that weren't the case, then I'd be doing something wrong. Partly cuz I'm writing my struggles and partly for tons of other reasons that I won't belabor here.

HAH! [on the second...] Is easier better? (and outside the 'tank, I don't rant so much as ramble in engaged/excited/stream-brain ways)
Commentary---it might be better for "keeping an audience"...but isn't "keeping and audience" another word for "inauthentic?" You talk about authenticity all over the place...I'm the most authentic motherfucker you ever met, rant-theticals are part of what makes me so]

HAH! [on both with Venn-type overlap...] If the medium is the message THEN the message is the medium.

HAH! [in meta-totality] I'm your fucking shadow-self/subconscious---cuz we end up in the same place way too often, but for different reasons, and opposite places somehow for the same damn reasons.

Kinda riffing on your last two statements:
Pretend we have---
Mundane
Mystical
Magical
Dennet and related want to say everything is mundane [and MEAN "mechanical" which isn't the same.]
Magical [God-bots] want so say there may be mechanical/mundane, but it was all created by and for a magical being with magical purposes.

Mystical is between---it definitely is not magical. But the Mundane, being complex and NOT clockWORK in nature "determines" [hah!] that there will be freedom. And I'm NOT talking probability, which is just mundane with hard math.
I'm talking actual points of choice.
And that actually exists, possibly. Different topic, different post, but I've mentioned it before. [[and not my imaginings, real people, real math, real possible proofs]
It seems that in any space of more than one dimension, containing "objects" numbering more than one with properties numbering more than one, there are "free" spaces. Points of inflection, indeterminate moments.
You can't save the world by wishing the sun's nova away...
But you can save the world by not spanking your child.

[Skyweir]

[Fist and Faith]

But I don't like the idea/terminology/use because I don't think any perspective/interpretation of it escapes a fundamental/foundational quality/implication: that there is "something" [[equivalent to "magic"]] that causes, has effects, outcomes, influence on every material thing, but is itself independent, NOT a property or force or process or result that can ever be accounted for by, through, or in the material world/explanations.

Well, of course, that's the crux, isn't it. Figuring out how it IS accounted for by, through, or in the material world/explanations. Because it most certainly is. Otherwise, again, it's Casper both flying through the wall AND knocking the vase off the table. If consciousness can't EVER be accounted for by, through, or in the material world/explanations, then it wouldn't be able to affect the material. Which it does. My consciousness makes my arm move. It does so by some crazy process of action potentials; sending signals along the neutral pathetic; sodium- and potassium- gated ion channels opening and closing... I mean, Jesus! Still, it's all particles and physics. How does consciousness, something that is not reducible to the material, affect the material?

Currently, my answer is that it's because my consciousness is also those things. It is the material. I cannot believe there is something there with the physical brain. Consciousness is the brain, so, obviously, it can affect the brain/itself. But it is material behaving in ways that cannot be reduced to properties of particles and their interactions. At least not the properties we are aware of/can study with our amazing technologies. The material is capable of something else. Obviously. But how?

[Vraith]

Currently, my answer is that it's because my consciousness is also those things. It is the material.

But how?

On the first, I'll give Z some warm feelings by quoting him, roughly [I think exactly, but maybe not quite]
"The material is more mystical than we've measured."

On the second---anyone who knows that could rule the world.
But whatever it is MUST be not far off, not too mysterious or perturbed or unrecognized/distant from the properties we DO know.
Cuz, remember: we can measure [only in limited and controlled circumstances so far, but the fact that we can do it AT ALL, while not really knowing the why/how of much of it] a brain working, and recreate and display---with only the properties we KNOW, and not even all of those---WHAT it is "seeing."
It's a definite WTF, But, WTF, BUT, YAAAAHHHAAAAAHHHHHHH>>fuck it, I want a kiss and some cake, fuck all that>>>>>>
kind of thing.

Aside---you go some fun directions sometimes, but several times here you've made a "mistake."
It's not really a mistake, it's just a shift I mentioned before and you didn't do anything with though I thought you might and could be fun if you did:
You keep saying shit about "particles."
But I told you there's a perspective---and one that "wins" many of the reality/physics "truth" wars in a way.
Particles are NOT things, exactly. They are local excitations of fields.
Like the waves surfers ride and pummel the shores are local/limited expressions of the ocean. [[and like the literal wave/ocean, there are many other fields/forces/seas, not to mention simply shapes of the space/shore that affect them.]]
So consciousness---as has been said before---is emergent...we understand the seed and the dirt...but the goddamn flower and bees? There's nothing NEW needed to get to them...it's just they are multiplex and we're still simplex.
All our explanations/understandings---at least the concretely demonstrable ones---are algorithmic, basically.
But reality is NOT algorithmic. We're just stuck in place where many smart people hold the totally irrational belief in the unreasonable effectiveness of math. Which is NEITHER an unreasonable thing, NOR close to effective as claimed.
There are two amazingly powerful reasons for that belief, though:
1) People think "math" is one thing. It ain't. The diffferences can kill you---like being a Brit at a biker bar...you walk up to a guy and ask "Fag?" you're probably going to get a beating, not a cigarette.
2) We don't have any damn thing else at the moment. Which is why people invented math, not the other way round. We can "Know" first---then prove...and THEN we know.

[Fist and Faith]

I don't disagree with any of that. Yes, we can see and measure brain activity, and even tell, based on having seen the same activity in others who have reported experiencing the same thing during said activity, what that activity means. But we don't know why/how that brain activity has any meaning. How is it more than a series of interactions?

Yes, particles can be seen as other than particles. Perhaps vibrating "strings" of ... Well, not strings. Vibrate one way, and we have what we call a photon. Vibrate another way, and we have what we call an electron. Etc. But we can refer to them as particles, just to make conversation easier. We're not writing in a class on quantum mechanics, after all. Of course, if NOT thinking of them as particles makes consciousness easier to understand, then, by all means!!! But a sodium ion in a synapse that is part of the process of moving my arm is certainly easier to understand as a group of particles. And the point is to figure out how all the parts of the process that are similarly much easier to see as particles can be affected by anything that cannot be seen as such, and which has qualities that cannot be attributed to the properties of particles. And how the two seemingly incompatible aspects of the whole can possibly be the same thing! Indeed, we don't have any damn thing else at the moment. No means/methods to figure out what the hell is going on.

[Skyweir]

Us intent more important than acts .. nope

[Fist and Faith]

From at least the first instant of the universe and through most of a billion years, there was no water. There wasn't even oxygen. In the really early stuff, there wasn't even hydrogen. Or [earlier] protons/electrons. And yet, from at least the first instant, there WAS "pre-aqueousness."
And we understand that pretty well.
I think we've covered MOST of the path/process to knowing consciousness, and the hard part is behind us.

Knowing all we know about properties of matter/energy/particles/local excitations of fields, we can easily see how water is possible. I don't know that I'd call it "pre-aqueousness", but, obviously, water is possible.

We cannot say the same about consciousness. We don't know of any properties that allow for consciousness, and I imagine we could make a decent argument that we know of properties that DON'T allow for it. The many amazing things we do know, things you have been talking about, are akin to understanding how memory is stored on a computer. Or even how words are printed in a book, and how books are organized so you can find the page that has the words you're looking for. It's all mechanical, whether it's chemical, electronic, or ink. I'm not remotely educated on the topic, but searching the internet I'm not finding anything that suggests we have a clue how the mechanical becomes other.

[Zarathustra]

The problem is that we treat the brain like a computer. The computer is our current default analogy. (In previous centuries it was the clock.) But the brain in no way functions like a computer. It's not digital. If you remove half the brain, it can still function. But you can remove a single transistor and a computer won't work. But more fundamentally, the logical form of a computer is entirely different from the functioning of the brain. Consciousness isn't an algorithm. Something else is going on.

We may indeed find out the physical properties that produce consciousness. But even then, I do not believe that we'll be able to reduce consciousness to those necessary functions or properties. I believe this is one instance where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and that something new and existentially unique occurs when consciousness is produced. This is clear by how consciousness crosses the divide from blind, purposeless mechanical processes into purposeful, goal-oriented behavior. It is on an order entirely different from every single physical process in the universe (that is, unless the universe actually is teleological). It produces a new kind of causality that is not strictly mechanical, but instead employs freewill to act both downward to matter itself or "sideways" from mental state to mental state. Consciousness can also anticipate the future, whereas physical processes do not.

I think our conceptual barrier is reductionism. We can preserve a naturalistic, even materialistic paradigm that can include consciousness, but we'll have to do away with reductionist tendencies that cause us to dismiss or "explain away" consciousness as nothing more than a physical process. It's obviously more.

[Skyweir]

Great to read that post Z

You lost me at reductionism

Is there a measurable difference ... at its most basic elements .. between human consciousness and the consciousness of any other species

Yes demonstrably there are differences .. in what humans have achieved compared to chimps or dogs or cats. But the physical anatomical differences between our species may to some degree provide an evolutionary explanation for that .. ie opposable thumbs.

Because we have them and others may not .. this has expanded human capability to learn and become mire and more oroficient at tasks etc.

Chimps make and use primitive tools. Who knows in a Millenia or less, or more their capabilities may increase and expand.

Maybe humans have a jump on other species only by virtue of our independent adaptations and overall evolution.

What if consciousness is nothing more than awareness. Humans are very much aware .. but so too are all living animals. Goldfish are moderately aware as a result of their much reduced memory.

Data storage capacity .. sorry to draw back from the computing analogy .. but not to compare the brain to a computer ... but we do store data .. in our brains memory and muscles apparently.. and arguably in other parts of our anatomy.

So memory is critical component of consciousness, isnt it

Yes Im rambling .. Im in the bath and need to get out soon so sush up. It could be the steam messing with my consciousness lol .. nay

So what if consciousness is simply existence. What further mystery does it hold Evidence of divinity Evidence of a soul

The cold hard truth might challenge all those ambitions. What is consciousness .. it is existence .. all animals and possibly other life forms to possess it .. with varying degrees of awareness and memory .. and anatomical brain size. What if its nothing more than organic.