If consciousness arises wherever physical interactions of the type seen in brains occur, what does this tell us about selfhood?

[androidbleepboop]

 

Quite a fascinating video. In ten minutes, it explores the origin of the traditional understanding of selfhood, wherein we each have a soul unto ourselves which animates our body and experiences our life, then shows how that belief is outdated given modern neuroscientific evidence. It goes on to conclude that rather than being something which belongs to each of us uniquely, consciousness is a universal phenomenon, something which has the potential to occur at any time and place in the Universe so long as the correct physical conditions are met. If this is the case, the experiencer of life is not each of our unique souls; consciousness is something that happens to the Universe itself. The ethical implications of this would be profound. 

[TheRobin]

Nothing happens "to the universe", "universe" is just the term for the sum of all that is. By definition nothing can happen "to it" as that would require something that is not part of the universe itself

 

I don't quite undertand what ethical implications there are to this. Could you expand that a bit?

[androidbleepboop]

Why don't you give the video a look? I think my comments will make sense in that context.

[androidbleepboop]

I'd also say that any phenomenon that occurs in the Universe can be said to happen to the Universe. For example, if a gas cloud coalesces into a star, the Universe now has one more star than before. Star birth happened to the Universe, just as a volcano erupting on Earth happens to the Earth (and simultaneously to the Universe). Perhaps this way of describing things is a bit unwieldy, but I don't think it can be said that by definition nothing can happen to the Universe.

[TheRobin]

so the video claims there is this thing they call Consciousness that experiences all of our experiences (or rather nor "ours" by definition of the video), because a particular manifestation in reality (certain patterns in our brains) have the same properties (being concious). That's just making a subject out of an property, like saying there is a thing called "Redness" that inhabits all red things or something like that.

 

I don't see how that holds logically.

[androidbleepboop]

It's a mischaracterization to say that this case suggests that the property of redness "inhabits" all red things. It is more accurate to say that all red things exhibit redness, which is not making a subject out of a property. All red subjects necessarily have the property "redness". Similarly, all conscious subjects have the property "conscious". Redness is a universal property that red things have, and consciousness is a universal property that all conscious things have. 

 

The unique thing about consciousness is that it requires an experiencer, a "self", to experience that consciousness. I think it is true that "you" are the unique experiencer of your consciousness, but consciousness is a universal property, so it doesn't belong to you uniquely. Everything that makes you you is a result of your unique brain, product of your unique genes, but if consciousness is a universal phenomenon, your uniqueness is but one expression of this universal phenomenon, Consciousness, so the experiencer of your "you" is the same fundamentally as the experiencer of my "me", just within a different shell and perspective.

[TheRobin]

it's not like I believed that I'm the only one who's self-aware (nor do I know of many people who do). So I still don't see what the point here is.

 

Unless you want to say that there's literally only one Conciousness that inhabits all our brains. Is that what it is, that you're saying?

[ribuck]

I watched the video and found it interesting, but unsatisfying.

 

He starts with a premise about souls which I don't share, but he rejects it anyway.

 

Then, at 4:35, he makes a gaping logical error, somehow jumping from "consciousness is a universal property that all conscious things have" to "all conscious things share the one consciousness". That's as invalid as saying "all animals eat food, therefore they all eat the same food". Wrong!

 

After that, he's just speculating and making stuff up.

 

Which is a pity. Consciousness is probably the largest gap in our understanding of physics. Despite MRI scans that can to some extent localise consciousness, we don't have even the slightest clue how the experiential aspect of it works.

 

There are some much better videos around that are actually science-based. I'll see if I can find some to post.

[androidbleepboop]

TheRobin: "Unless you want to say that there's literally only one Consciousness that inhabits all our brains. Is that what it is, that you're saying?" 

 

Yes, I believe so. I think the evidence (that subjective experience arises wherever physical interactions of the type undergone by brains occur) suggests very plainly that the phenomenon of subjective experience is not unique to each of us, but much more fundamental than that. Subjectivity is a Universal potential that we each partake in from a unique perspective. 

 

Ribuck: I don't think you interpreted the argument correctly. The argument is not analogous to "all animals eat food, therefore they all eat the same food." If you were to try and draw a correct analogy in those terms, it would go "all animals need food for energy to sustain the biological processes necessary to survival. This is enacted through the laws of chemistry, which themselves are extensions of the Universal laws of physics. Through eating, all animals engage the same Universal laws of physics via chemistry via biology to survive. Every instance of "eating food" is unique, but each necessarily occurs in the context and as an expression of these universal conditions." That is the form of the argument for consciousness being a universal phenomenon shared by all brains. 

[ribuck]

Ribuck: I don't think you interpreted the argument correctly ... Through eating, all animals engage the same Universal laws of physics via chemistry via biology to survive. Every instance of "eating food" is unique, but each necessarily occurs in the context and as an expression of these universal conditions." That is the form of the argument for consciousness being a universal phenomenon shared by all brains. 

 

Maybe you're right that I misinterpreted his argument. In that case, he makes his logical error further along.

 

He argues that consciousness is a universal phenomenon shared by all brains. At this point he's really just saying that all brains work according to the same laws of physics (just as all magnetic fields work according to the same laws of physics). Then he changes the meaning of "shared" for the rest of the video, to imply that the different consciousnesses share some kind of connection. And from there he waffles on about the ethical and philosophical aspects that follow on (from his logical error).

 

Maybe I'm misinterpreting him again, but in that case the ethical and philosophical stuff at the end of the video is a total non-sequitur.

[androidbleepboop]

I don't see it as implying that "different consciousnesses share some kind of connection," exactly. I agree that this point in the video is a bit abstract and difficult to grasp, but I think it is still saying that each consciousness is experientially distinct from all others. For example, it says "your agonies are endured in the same experiential fabric as mine, just within a different shell, a superficially separate 'me'. While I don't feel your pain in my body, the one entity which does any feeling at all feels your pain, and my experiences are shared in that one entity." 

 

The point of this, to me, is that currently we are each stuck in our own perspective, due to being centered in our own brains. However, if consciousness is a phenomenon inherent to the Universe which brains tap into, then we are both tapping into this same phenomenon. I picture it as if every distinct brain is a window through which that universal potential (present everywhere in the Universe) is explicitly realized and engaged. In order to have any experience at all, one's brain must enact that Universal potential. So the point is that consciousness is much closer to the fundamental nature of the Universe than it is to our unique identities (contrary to the way the soul idea has it). Because of this, we can still behave cruelly, maybe stealing someone else's car and enjoying riding it around while they go into debt, without personally feeling the negative consequences of that action, but if their brains are tapping into the same Universal potential for consciousness to happen, that universal phenomenon experiences the stress of going into debt from their perspective. Again, "while I don't feel your pain in my body, the one entity which does any feeling at all feels your pain, and my experiences are shared in that one entity." For this reason, it is nonsensical to engage in cruelty, because you are foolishly thinking you are benefitting through causing pain for another, but that pain occurs in the phenomenon of consciousness, and you are a participant in that exact same phenomenon. 

 

Does that make sense? I agree that it is quite a complex idea, especially in contrast to the simplicity of the traditional understanding. Perhaps despite not being immediately obvious, it is closer to the truth of things. At least, that's what it seems to me the evidence is saying.

[ribuck]

... While I don't feel your pain in my body, the one entity which does any feeling at all feels your pain ... Does that make sense?

 

No, that doesn't make sense. It's an interesting hypothesis but there's zero evidence for it (either in the video you linked, or in evidence-based research).

 

We know very little about the nature of consciousness. It may even turn out that the "one entity" hypothesis is correct, but there's no reason to assume this. There are other hypotheses that, based on current research, are more likely to explain consciousness.

 

The two most promising directions being successfully explored at the moment are quite bizarrely different, which just shows how little we know yet.

 

One of the two mainstream hypotheses holds that we aren't really conscious, that consciousness is just a useful illusion that provided an evolutionary advantage. This sounds bizarre indeed, and it flies in the face of common sense (as did relativity and quantum mechanics at first). However, it's serious science. The arguments being put together are rigorous and logical as far as they go, but they run out of steam before reaching any breakthrough. There is a really good video explaining this hypothesis, but I can't find it right now. Personally, I don't find this hypothesis interesting because I can't reconcile it with the intensity of my own conscious experience. If it weren't for the rigor of the research, I'd be describing this hypothesis as sophistry!

 

The second mainstream hypothesis holds that consciousness is a local phenomenon emerging from certain types of complex physical interaction, by some undiscovered mechanism. The arguments are based on solid science, but they don't take us very far because again the experimentation barely scratches the surface.

 

According to this hypothesis, consciousness manifests itself at the interface between the part of the brain that processes information and the part of the brain that drives the physical body. Interestingly, they have managed to localise the conscious experience to a specific area in the brain stem. People who have had one part of their brain stem destroyed (e.g. by a stroke) have physical body functions but no consciousness (they are in a coma), and people who have had another part of their brain stem destroyed have consciousness but no physical body functions (they have "locked-in syndrome").

 

Here's a video which describes the current understanding of consciousness. It's an informal overview, and the presenter isn't a neuro-scientist. He's a "philosopher" in the sense that he studies consciousness but does not do original research. As you will see in the video, he's clearly not convinced by the first mainstream hypothesis.

 

[androidbleepboop]

I'm not sure what your definition of evidence is. The evidence that consciousness is a "local phenomenon emerging from certain types of complex physical interaction" is direct evidence that the phenomenon itself is within the set of possible things in the Universe, and is therefore a Universal phenomenon. If you don't see the link between this evidence and the hypothesis that the one who experiences this phenomenon is not itself unique for every expression of this phenomenon, that's fine, but it is simply incorrect to state that "there is zero evidence for it."

 

On the other hand, as far as I am aware, there is zero evidence for the first case you mention, the consciousness as illusion hypothesis. Some hard materialists jumped to this conclusion based on certain ill-conceived experiments, such as one which supposedly showed that the brain has decided on an action before the subject is consciously aware of choosing that action. This experiment was shown to be false because the millisecond measurements involved were well within the margin of error for the accuracy of the measuring apparatus. Essentially, this first hypothesis is an attempt to ignore the evidence in favor of consciousness as a real phenomenon because it doesn't fit into their paradigm; hard materialism cannot be correct if consciousness is a causal phenomenon in the Universe, and therefore proponents of hard materialism are required to find some way to dismiss consciousness. As you said, this attempt fails extravagantly due to the obvious existence of consciousness, as evidenced by our experience of reality. After all, even to believe that consciousness is an illusion requires conscious awareness of that belief!

 

The second case you mention as presented expertly by Searle is not at all in conflict with the hypothesis in the video, it simply doesn't take the next step and connect the universality of this phenomenon (which is assured if this phenomenon arises anywhere in the Universe that the correct physical conditions are met) to overturning the cherished tradition of self-uniqueness for every expression of that phenomenon.

[ribuck]

The evidence that consciousness is a "local phenomenon emerging from certain types of complex physical interaction" is direct evidence that the phenomenon itself is within the set of possible things in the Universe, and is therefore a Universal phenomenon.

 

Well, yes, by that definition every phenomenon is a universal phenomenon. But what does that buy you? What additional knowledge or insight is gained by knowing that something is within the set of possible things in the universe?

[androidbleepboop]

I think it helps shift the perspective from the anthropomorphic (anything that involves or happens to humans is uniquely special) to the cosmic (we are all expressions of the Universe, and far from the center of it in significance). This makes me question the validity of the all-too-human belief that each of our consciousnesses is singularly unique, and gives credence to the thought that the experiencer of consciousness is in effect the Universe, and not fundamentally the sole domain of the organism currently engaging that potential.

[Guest darkskyabove]

I think it helps shift the perspective from the anthropomorphic (anything that involves or happens to humans is uniquely special) to the cosmic (we are all expressions of the Universe, and far from the center of it in significance). This makes me question the validity of the all-too-human belief that each of our consciousnesses is singularly unique, and gives credence to the thought that the experiencer of consciousness is in effect the Universe, and not fundamentally the sole domain of the organism currently engaging that potential.

(emphasis mine)

 

What evidence do you have that your consciousness and my consciousness are not unique? What commonality do they share? Where is this common, universal, purveyor of consciousness?

 

Here again, and again, and again...is the insidiousness of arrogance. That because you are conscious, somehow, every other conscious entity must share commonality with your consciousness.

 

On the one hand, you have expressed a degree of commonality. "We are all one."

 

On the other hand, your commentary shows that you believe yourself to be "special"; if for no other reason, than that you recognize your conclusions, while others do not.

 

What's the mystery? If "we are all one consciousness", wouldn't that be apparent in the activity of consciousness, itself? Or, does it require some "leap of the imagination" to reach such a non-apparent conclusion. (Refer to Occam's razor.)

 

In my final analysis, it appears that the entire "Universal Consciousness" issue is a poor substitute for mysticism. That which has not been fully explained can be explained by the "witch doctor".

 

Why not invest the same level of time and effort into a rational explanation?

[androidbleepboop]

What commonality do they share? Well, obviously, they are both states of consciousness, therefore they share all attributes which conscious states share. Clearly they are unique in the sense that mine is exclusive to me, and yours is exclusive to you, but we are examining the origin of the phenomenon itself, and not any single specific case of it. 

 

Your analysis of my supposed arrogance has no bearing on this discussion, and while I disagree, it doesn't matter to me if you believe that. I don't see any way I could convince you one way or another, and trying to dismiss my stance in that way equates to an ad hominem fallacy. It doesn't take arrogance to hold a specific viewpoint, otherwise, you would have to be equally arrogant to hold yours.

 

If we are all one consciousness, but this fact is superficially hidden from us due to us each only experiencing the consciousness our brains produce, then of course it would not be apparent in "the activity of consciousness itself". 

 

I have no idea what you mean by saying "that which has not been fully explained can be explained by the witch doctor." If that is your final analysis of the argument, it is clear that you completely misunderstood the argument.

[masonman]

(emphasis mine)

 

What evidence do you have that your consciousness and my consciousness are not unique? What commonality do they share? Where is this common, universal, purveyor of consciousness?

 

Here again, and again, and again...is the insidiousness of arrogance. That because you are conscious, somehow, every other conscious entity must share commonality with your consciousness.

 

On the one hand, you have expressed a degree of commonality. "We are all one."

 

On the other hand, your commentary shows that you believe yourself to be "special"; if for no other reason, than that you recognize your conclusions, while others do not.

 

What's the mystery? If "we are all one consciousness", wouldn't that be apparent in the activity of consciousness, itself? Or, does it require some "leap of the imagination" to reach such a non-apparent conclusion. (Refer to Occam's razor.)

 

In my final analysis, it appears that the entire "Universal Consciousness" issue is a poor substitute for mysticism. That which has not been fully explained can be explained by the "witch doctor".

 

Why not invest the same level of time and effort into a rational explanation?

 

I didn't interpret it as going that far in the video. I mean the electric field produced by your computer is not treated as its own phenomenon, its considered a basic physical law that appears anywhere when certain conditions are present. The video points out that humans tend to think of consciousness completely differently (and unscientifically) - that each person has a unique consciousness (soul, etc.), but as it is already known that simply is not the case, we have different arrangements of consciousnesses (just like we have different arrangements of electric fields - with different magnitudes and directions depending on different physical factors). Of course consciousness is an aggregate, but then again so is an electric field (I mean heck its magnitude is measured as a rate - Newtons per Coulomb).

 

"What evidence do you have that your consciousness and my consciousness are not unique?"

 

We know that in all probability under equal stimuli your brain will respond differently to my brain, but its the same phenomenon going on. Different electric field magnitudes and/or directions do not mean they need to be treated as completely different subjects in physics.

 

"If 'we are all one consciousness', wouldn't that be apparent in the activity of consciousness, itself?" The video put forth that our experiences are all manifestations of a universal phenomenon called consciousness (I don't mean to Peter Joseph this conversation, but I don't know how else to put it). Just like all electric fields are all manifestations of a universal phenomenon called charge. I don't think it claimed that each human consciousness is literally physically connected.

 

All these claims are completely falsifiable. For one, if humans can completely rebuild a brain from the ground up and "turn it on", but no matter what the synthetic brain physically cannot act like any human brain, then that means there is another ingredient to consciousness that nobody yet knows about. If a brain similarly constructed to other brains acts completely out of any pattern seen in other brains, once again there is something missing.

 

"What additional knowledge or insight is gained by knowing that something is within the set of possible things in the universe?"

 

Ok so whats the significance of this argument? Isn't the guy in the video just saying "nearly identical physical forms all act in the essentially same way"? Well... yes. So there is one phenomenon called human consciousness. I've heard it said plenty of times (in different words, of course), "your consciousness is nothing more than the side-effect of the configuration of your brain." Which as far as we know is quite possibly true. So, who am I? I can say "I'm Mason" but that is just a sound/word/image that has been associated to identify my individual form. That tells us nothing about whats behind your eyes. Who, or better said - what - is actually taking in the physical stimuli measured by my senses and experiencing it?

 

I mean, when I look at things in a purely physical way, there is no "me," as much as there is an arrangement of cells occurring in nature. Humans just decided not to divide things down that far and find it much more practical to identify me by the aggregate. Its easy to call an arrangement of trees a "forest" but if we want to compare two forests we are required to acknowledge the individual parts (and we can choose how far down we want to go, tree types, cell types, atoms, protons, etc.).

 

So how can consciousness be anything other than universal? I can say "I am experiencing the touch and sight of this computer and I am contemplating about the response to these posts" but "I" is something imagined up by consciousness to help keep everything in order, right? Evolution brought about brains that always work to bring order to differing stimulus.

 

I think the best comparison I can think of is if my cat, Tally, is eating food, I can say "Tally is eating food" but Tally is a name I have assigned to one individual instance of "cat." "A cat" is eating food. Of course I can break that down further, but that would simply add unnecessary wording to the same thing. However this is still a bad comparison, because consciousness as a phenomenon is unique in that we are using the very thing we are trying to explain in order to explain it. My consciousness is just "a consciousness," my consciousness is just an instance of "consciousness."

 

So, consciousness as a phenomenon comes before "I" do. Consciousness experiences what the senses interpret. Consciousness as a phenomenon identified and later named its own instance. We know a few other animals are capable of identifying their own instance as well (with the mirror test). So cats and other animals that fail the mirror test can be seen as "unintentional hippies" lol. They don't even have self-awareness, they are only capable of somewhat identifying other moving things and dealing with them accordingly. They are a consciousness without any sense of "me." They are just a floating experience machine like the rest of us, but they haven't gotten all mucked up in attempting to name and identify everything as if that brings you closer to reality.

 

If you have a room of computers, all built slightly different, and you turn one on, did you "create" anything? No, you just started running current through a certain arrangement of equipment. If that equipment then automatically begins identifying its individual parts, and gives itself a name ("Computer 13"), what happens when you take a sledgehammer to the computer? "Computer 13" as a few bits of data (which is just using current to create relative values through voltage) separates out into "disorder" (subjectively, according to both human-built computers and human brains). I think part of what the video is saying is just that that is all death is, shutting off a universal phenomenon in one tiny part of the universe, but that doesn't not shut off the phenomenon as a whole, or as a scientific rule.

 

"The second mainstream hypothesis holds that consciousness is a local phenomenon emerging from certain types of complex physical interaction, by some undiscovered mechanism"

 

This idea presented in the video coincides perfectly with this hypothesis.

 

My argument and the argument in the video is that you don't experience consciousness, consciousness just experiences. It just "is" as a result of your brain. What is "you" but a small bit of data generated by the consciousness? If you placed a brain in a life support system with NO sensory input, it would be a consciousness without the ability to identify anything. It cannot logically build the idea of "you" because it cannot connect with physical reality. I think that would be one of the most fascinating experiments possible to observe. I wonder what the brain would do. Would it just sit at a standstill, processing nothing, just storing a miniscule piece of energy? That's my hypothesis.

 

Believe me, I am ready to spin on a dime on this line of argument, but I cannot see any gaping flaws in it at the moment (then again I've only been tossing it around in my head for like a few hours). If somebody DOES draw the conclusion of "we are all physically/consciously connected" from this video, I would say that is not supported by the evidence humans have so far.

 

I could be totally spewing woo-woo though, it wouldn't be the first time.

[Guest darkskyabove]

I didn't interpret it as going that far in the video...

...We know that in all probability under equal stimuli your brain will respond differently to my brain, but its the same phenomenon going on. Different electric field magnitudes and/or directions do not mean they need to be treated as completely different subjects in physics...

 

 

Beg to differ. Watched the video again to double-check. He made a specific claim that we are, potentially, all part of one "universal experiencer". Granted, it's a soft claim, prefaced repeatedly by "What if...?". I think what bothers me most about this type of presentation is that after debunking early humans relying on myth to explain the unknown, he goes on to present his own "myth" for something that is still "unknown".

I should also clarify the context of my position on the uniqueness of any particular consciousness. I am considering each consciousness as a specific phenomenon, not as a study of similarities shared. Would it not be a fallacy of composition to claim: because one or more entities have a property, consciousness, therefore, all entities have the same consciousness?

[Lians]

Why would you watch a video called "Who experiences your life?"

[androidbleepboop]

Masonman- Excellently said, I couldn't agree more with what you said. The point you make concerning animals without self-models as consciousness simply experiencing without analyzing is very interesting, and one that hadn't occurred to me before. 

 

darkskyabove- "Beg to differ. Watched the video again to double-check. He made a specific claim that we are, potentially, all part of one "universal experiencer." 

I still think you are misinterpreting that point, and I'm surprised it isn't clicking given the rebuttals I and Masonman have made. The point is that in order for experiences to occur, the phenomenon of consciousness must be there to have the experience. The phenomenon of consciousness itself is not something unique to your brain, but is something which is possible anywhere in the Universe, so long as physical interactions of they type brains under go occur. Since your brain is able to perform those types of physical interactions, consciousness happens in your brain. It isn't something special about your brain that makes your consciousness happen; brains anywhere in the Universe can make consciousness happen. The "Universal experiencer" is theorized here to be present wherever consciousness happens. 

 

Ha ha Lians- why wouldn't you?

[Guest darkskyabove]

Why would you watch a video called "Who experiences your life?"

 

Because I like to keep tabs on what the enemy is up to. Enemy being whoever is spouting the latest flavor of irrationality. Same reason I force myself to check up on main-stream media: to see what the latest babble is to come bubbling up from the pit.

[Lians]

Ha ha Lians- why wouldn't you?

 

Who experiences your life?

 

The answer is in the question.

Because I like to keep tabs on what the enemy is up to. Enemy being whoever is spouting the latest flavor of irrationality. Same reason I force myself to check up on main-stream media: to see what the latest babble is to come bubbling up from the pit.

 

The world is full of what I call pocket mystics. Better focus on the big guys. Life's too short.

[androidbleepboop]

Lians: perhaps that's the point of the question. Maybe it isn't really that straightforward, as the video shows. 

[masonman]

Beg to differ. Watched the video again to double-check. He made a specific claim that we are, potentially, all part of one "universal experiencer". Granted, it's a soft claim, prefaced repeatedly by "What if...?". I think what bothers me most about this type of presentation is that after debunking early humans relying on myth to explain the unknown, he goes on to present his own "myth" for something that is still "unknown".

I should also clarify the context of my position on the uniqueness of any particular consciousness. I am considering each consciousness as a specific phenomenon, not as a study of similarities shared. Would it not be a fallacy of composition to claim: because one or more entities have a property, consciousness, therefore, all entities have the same consciousness?

 

He might be taking further than I do, I mean as a phenomenon it is a universal experiencer, but I don't see any implication that it means consciousnesses are physically connected.

 

"because one or more entities have a property, consciousness, therefore, all entities have the same consciousness?"

 

I mean, all physical entities have a property, gravity, and I would argue they undergo the same phenomenon, gravity, however the magnitudes and directions vary greatly of course.

 

"I am considering each consciousness as a specific phenomenon"

 

In what way is this a better approach than the idea of souls? We know human brains are not extremely unique from one another, they share very similar characteristics, and they exhibit very similar measurable activity. So the idea that consciousness is a universal phenomenon that occurs wherever a brain-like structure is assembled is not exactly a wild jump.

 

The answer is in the question.

 

Ok, show me the "you" that is doing the experiencing. Your body isn't doing the experiencing. Your brain is the circuit that provides the environment necessary for conscious experience, so that isn't you. So who does the experiencing?

[PatrickC]

Lians: perhaps that's the point of the question. Maybe it isn't really that straightforward, as the video shows. 

 

Mystics are never straight forward

[masonman]

Well, they could have called it "consciousness and experience" but then fewer people would click the video. A TON of videos on scientific topics, not to mention quite a few TED talks, have names that don't coincide perfectly accurately with the things discussed in the video. Its a form of marketing I suppose you could say.