The Thinking Ape: The Enigma of Human Consciousness
Вставка
- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- What is the origin and nature of consciousness? If consciousness is common to humans and animals alike, what are the defining traits of human consciousness?
Nobel laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman, philosopher David Chalmers, expert in primate cognition Laurie Santos, and physician-scientist Nicholas Schiff will discuss what it means to be "conscious" and examine the human capacities displayed in cognitive, aesthetic, and ethical behaviors, with a focus on the place and function of the mind within nature.
The New York Academy of Sciences
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
This event is part of The Emerging Science of Consciousness Series, which brings together leading experts from various fields to discuss how the latest research is challenging our understanding of the very nature and function of consciousness in our daily lives.
www.nourfoundat...
I like how colloquial David Chalmers is, calling these people by nicknames!
"I use to think my brain was the most important part of my body, than I realized what was telling me that" Dr. Katz
CONSCIOUS is the most fascinating thing in the world
"But you could surely program the robot to do all of the above?"
The answer lies in the question. Might as well ask if books have consciousness.
Awareness and Consciousness are often used interchangeably when describing the self. However, in order to start to understand either one or the other, one has to start by understanding two distinct aspects of the “self”.
When we were young, there are feature of ourselves that were very different when compared with the way we are now. Our understanding and our way of dealing with our environment is different when we were young compared to today.
Yet there is a feature of the self that hasn’t changed from when we were young. “It was still me when I was young just as it is still me today”.
Awareness and our way of dealing with of our environment changes as we grow older. Awareness also changes if we develop a mental disorder, e.g. Alzheimer. However, even with Alzheimer, it is still the same “self” experiencing the world, even though the experiences will be different with Alzheimer compared to not having Alzheimer.
We are given two words, awareness and consciousness, that seem to mean the same, but it is useful to define a distinction between these two words. We can say that Awareness is our changing understanding and analysis of the environment. Whereas consciousness is the “self” that never changes, e.g. “It’s always been me however my experiences may have changed”.
Awareness is involves receiving information of our environment and reacting to this information with different degrees of thought and analysis. Some actions, e.g. walking, are instinctive and require very little thought. Other actions, e.g. emotions of love or finding a partner, can be both instinctive and lead to further thought and analysis. Other aspects may rely less on instinct, e.g. building and science. Although even with these there may by some instinct involved when we say “this solution feels right”.
Evolution is good at the process of encouraging features from generation to generation, that are useful in one’s environment. It has led to our present faculty for the awareness of our environment we experience today (whether instinctively or as a result of deeper thought and analysis). Awareness includes all our emotions, our capacity to resolve problems and to adapt.
Awareness is certainly very useful and therefore a prime candidate in evolution to be developed and improved upon from generation to generation.
But what about consciousness (as defined above). This aspect of the self that doesn’t change throughout the course of our lives. Is it useful ?
Consciousness is the unchanging aspect of the self that experiences awareness. Consciousness doesn’t provide any input to awareness to affect our behaviour since all our understanding and analysis of the environment is carried out by our awareness (as defined above).
Whether or not someone possesses this unchanging self, or consciousness, does not affect their behaviour. As a result, it is very difficult to detect in living organisms, let alone in artificial intelligence. Furthermore, an artificial intelligence may confuse ownership with consciousness and therefore may say it has consciousness.
I want to end this comment with a final thought.
If consciousness, by its nature of not affecting awareness is outside evolution, then it doesn’t follow the rules of evolution as we understand it, i.e. it is outside evolution through birth, reproduction, death.
Poor David, he is the smartest and the most modest, yet the others sometimes sneer at him.
Thank you so much for share this vídeo. I as usual i ended up with more questions than answers but i thinks thats The most valuable thing in this exercises.
daniel kahneman really enjoys his reality tunnel
Simply Gold, thanks for posting
I am agreeing with you.. Current science only takes us so far, and then, we get into the "supernatural" and "spiritual".. "the electric universe theory, takes the supernatural, and makes it natural." .. what is "a spirit", a being of Light? from another dimension? some other form of vibratiing matter? let's try now to turn the "spirit" into something tangible, so we can study it with science.
53:00 - It seems a bit odd that we would require a fully fleshed out definition before we proceed to inquire about what it is we are inquiring about. On one hand, if we didn't have even the slightest definition these panel discussions wouldn't be possible, and on the other hand, if we had the definition in full, there would be nothing here to discuss except what the definition covers. So maybe instead of asking for the criterion that would fulfill our definition, we should be asking for explanatory models that adequately explain the kinds of phenomena we inquire about when we talk about consciousness.
Something I do feel a litter leery about concerning the lack of a definition of consciousness, is that in one historical era we end up believing we have it solved because we equate it to brain states, and in another historical era we believe we know nothing about it because we can't investigate first person perspectives. So a lot of this is dependant upon what counts as an answer in any given epoch. Round and round we go, expanding and contracting the definition to create the problem again and again; it's forever new.
What happens to consciousness when all life is extinct or universe ends.
What if consciousness is not meant to be known, but experienced?
Well there is only one thing to do . Get you're post graduate degree , publish a few books , a few peer reviewed articles , and counter the obvious falsehoods you know , but people with those pesky degrees do not know .
I'm guessing this is about the brain being all there is to mind, consciousness, being.
consciousness is two minds living in one skull. One is from your mom, the other is from your dad. If you a guy, then you female side, your left side, is weaker, or less sophisticated. If your a woman, then your male side is lesser. you are you, but you are also your parents, together. that's why you hear that small little voice in the back of your head. It's your other side chiming in. two minds in one. split those, you have four and on and on, until you have millions of minds making yours.
Awareness is a natural phenomenon, even if it cannot be reduced to single neurons.
You think calculus helps us survive and procreate?
God is the ultimate Consciousness and because the sciences can't discern Spirit(Mind) through the physical senses (brain) they will never know about consciousness or spiritual awareness...Buddhism is closer to the reality of consciousness then this intellectual bunch....ugh!
Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennet, Richard Dawkins, and Roger Penrose would be more qualified to talk about this subject.
Comparing what is known and has been proven today with the speculation in this video from 2012 should be interesting.
1. What kind of consciousness do animals have? Known.
2. Will computers become conscious? No.
3. Is neuroscience the most important discipline in trying to understand consciousness? No. Clearly not since the explanation didn't come from neuroscience. But, neuroscience will certainly add more detail in the future.
4. What we are lacking is explanation? False now but this was completely true in 2012 when the video was produced.
5. We will need robots that act conscious first? No, this turned out to be wrong.
6. When will we have a robot that can use natural language? It is known now how to do it. This might be in large-scale prototype hardware by 2027 if Trump is not re-elected. If Trump is re-elected or Pence is elected then then push that back. It will take several more generations after that to make the hardware small enough to fit in a human-sized robot.
7. What is it about human consciousness that sets us apart from the animal world? Known. A lack of motivation to share? That's not the primary difference.
8. How far across the animal spectrum does consciousness go? All the way across? No. Arthropods, roundworms, flatworms, and most mollusks are not conscious. It's hard to tell where consciousness ends? No, this is known.
9. Is a brain needed for consciousness? No, but panpsychism is nonsense. Something equivalent to a brain is required whether it is biological or not.
10. We don't know that consciousness is not present in these non-biological systems? No, this is known. Chalmers is way out in la-la land here. Although it would be possible today to build a non-biological consciousness, it is well known that none has ever occurred nor can occur naturally and that none exists within the scope of human knowledge.
11. We first need to build a theory of consciousness that explains the data. True, this is what has been done. Chalmers was correct on this point.
12. There's a question about whether or not jellyfish are conscious? No, they are not. Chalmers is grasping at straws again.
13. It may be the case that a theory of consciousness will tie it to information? Okay, not everything Chalmers says is crazy. He's closer to the mark with this one.
14. There is a disconnect between our thinking about information and our emotional intuition about consciousness? That's a good point but it's not correct. That is actually covered by the theory.
15. We need a map of the brain to understand consciousness? No. There are actually limitations with the connectome that would prevent this but this fact wasn't known or understood in 2012.
16. Write the laws governing consciousness on a tee-shirt? Good luck with that; the theory runs about 600 pages.
17. Consciousness can't be defined? It can but the definition is somewhat long.
18. Do we need a new paradigm of science to explain consciousness? No.
19. The mind needs to be more than a biochemical process? It needs to be emergent or transcendent? It is well known and proven that the mind is not transcendent or emergent. However, describing it as merely a biochemical process sounds odd. The metabolism of sugar doesn't generate consciousness but almost all aerobic organisms need it.
20. What are the advantages of consciousness? I can't wait to see how they answer this. Wow, no answer. I didn't realize that no one had any idea about this back in 2012. Today, this is known in long and boring detail. I guess that's quite a jump in just a few years.
Explain consciousness; create a theory of consciousness. Mostly done.
Idiotic non-answers. Please tell us this grand theory that no one is aware of except you which answers all these questions. Tell us oh great one.
+Pollen Applebee
I'm sorry that you feel bitter about this; you are not alone. Am I great? You've never heard of me so presumably not. Is it a grand theory? I'm not sure about that but it is large and comprehensive. Could I type out the 500 hardcover pages (600 with fractional theory) required to describe it in the comment section here? Probably not. Would I have any reason to attempt that? No. The earliest possible publication was 2018 but this has been pushed back to 2021 due to the current administration.
I'm sorry that you think my comments were non-answers. Will computers ever become conscious? No. The refutation to the computing theory of mind is pretty robust. It disproves the CTM even without a theory of consciousness.
Are jellyfish conscious? No, they are not. Nor are plants or insects or worms. The evolutionary development of consciousness can be shown in detail from round worms to fish to mammals to humans. I'm not aware of any other theory that can do this. In other words if you know of another theory that explains an evolutionary basis for consciousness then please let me know.
Chalmers did mention information. He was on the right track with that point. There wasn't any supporting theory in terms of information. All that was available was Shannon's theory on information and the philosophical concept of knowledge as justified, true belief. Since neither of these provided a foundation, a new knowledge theory had to be derived that tied into Shannon but with regard to intelligent agents.
Again, I'm sorry that something makes you feel bad. Perhaps you really like Chalmers or his ideas and want him to succeed even though you probably realize intellectually that he has not advanced the field in the slightest. There have some small advances in artificial intelligence due to Cyc, Watson, and neural network research but nothing in terms of human-like reasoning or understanding.
You must realize how tenuous the field is. There is no definition of consciousness or understanding or of intelligence. There are no formulas or equations that define intelligence as there are in every other field of science. Imagine talking about gases without the Ideal Gas Law or imagine talking about chemistry without Avogadro's Number. Imagine trying to discuss physics without formulas for force or energy. You wouldn't get anywhere.
What I'm talking about includes definitions and formulas. Intelligence and consciousness are defined. The requirements are defined. I did make an error in saying that it was done. The work that is going on now involves the relationship between computational theory and cognitive theory so it is not complete. I'm hopeful that it will be complete by mid 2019 which would keep things on track for 2021.
I think Daniel is missing David's point that it is not the tangible components of the brain themselves that give arise to these more complex functions, but rather that human beings, for whatever reason, have access (through evolution/ God(s)) to more comprehensive ways of thinking and being (consciousness). David's point seems to be that the brain is simply a messenger but it is not the reason for consciousness per se.
My question is if a human is raised without learning a language and never even exposed to one; what would be going on in their mind?
Would that person have an inner-monologue? Maybe they would have more visual thoughts instead of words.
What would they think about or how would they think?
If multiple people grew up with language; Would they make their own words? Is this part of human nature?
This is the unhappiest scientific panel ever. Except for Chalmers, they look so dejected by the opacity of the hard problem of consciousness.
It seems that David is suggesting that consciousness arises from various cognitive processes rather than as Daniel suggests that, taking from David's point, that we are trying to pin down an area of the human brain that brings about consciousness (and possibly extend this finding to other animals).
i like the idea that the universe cannot exist without life. because all reality relies on the context of the state that it is in. without life there would be nothing to perceive the presence of reality, and without the universe there would be no consciousness because there would be nothing to be conscious of
All reality relies on the context of state of mind! Look at Austic people what's real to them
But it doesn't mean that the universe wouldn't exist on its own without life. It's lyk saying u seize to exist if u sleep or in a coma.
Why on earth is Daniel Kahneman on this panel?! He states at the outset that he never got himself completely fascinated with the question at hand. Why be on a panel titled "The Enigma of Human Consciousness" then? He goes on to contribute very little of value to the conversation, aside from his thought experiment about whether he would be fooled into thinking a robot was conscious, which he kept coming back to over and over. Most of what he had to offer other than that was simple pessimism.
What we think about thinking isn't the same as thinking. Our words, language, and discrete experiences & disciplines confuse the issue. People not being able to define and measure consciousness consistently is not the same as saying it can not be measured consistently. Based on this discussion, consciousness has unlimited measures which mitigate proving it exists in non-human subjects. Yet with human subjects, we assume we are conscious, without consistent measurement shared across disciplines.
Great talk on an essential theme!
However, I find Laurie Santos' claim that non-human primates doesn't share their thoughts and knowledge rather strange. Chimps are known to make tools and to learn other members patiently about their methods. Also they are known to have great pleasure in watching impressive scenary in nature, like beautiful waterfalls, often resulting in ecstatic outbursts. And, although not in nature, apes who have learned sign language share both their thoughts and feelings.
"We will have robots that appear to be consciouss to us!!" A seemingly amazing proposition. NOT. For how many years have we had wonderfully drawn cartoons, whose character express emotion and to which we react emotionally to?
When asked at the end about what they found their most probing question of consciousness is I would have thought someone might have said something about whether consciousness is body based. In others words is it there before the body comes into being, continue during the body's life and then continue afterward like Eastern philosophy and Plato etc. would hold. That to me would be my answer to what is the most deep question about consciousness is.
Chalmers: "Panpsychism: that everything has a mind!"
*everyone else on the panel attempts to hide smirks*
Great discussion! haha Danny Kahneman puts down Chalmers at every opportunity =P
I find this very interesting!! they discussed how they have tried for years to use science to describe a subjective reality and they have all come to a conclusion that it its unknown.they were all silenced at the end of their theoretical ideas, but they neglected to go into detail about spirituality,Which is all that remains, I understand people have skeptic views on that subject and it becomes to touchy but it is the most and the last relevant subject to explain our bonds and consciousness!!!
I am not a smart man. But after reading this, maybe I'm not that bad after all.
I think what we consider to be consciousness is just information processing about our own information processing. It takes 2 or more levels of processing where one level is the physical body and its process of metabolism and information gathering and the reflection on that is what we call consciousness.
In your definition, a computer program that processes the information processing of another one is conscious. It is a bad definition and does not answer anything.
It's completely healthy to have a devil's advocate in any scientific debate.
Kahneman says, "What is consciousness for? We can't find anything that can't be done without it." How wild is that to think about?
You cannot define consciousness, it just is. We can each feel it, and we should remember that others feel the same as we do. It is self-reflection, and is mindfulness. It is awareness of being aware. It's a wave in an ocean of possibility,
Those who are sure that they know are called mystics, but then they say it takes experiencing to understand. In other words you have to experience the big picture and everything else falls short. So it seems mysterious. But it is really simple, just clear your mind of it's ego. It is simple but does not mean that most persons are ever able to do it. In the past, religions were created. Now it is getting accepted that being egoless and holistic is good enough----just accept the world for whatever you see. Even the word "consciousness" is used to mean different ideas so that it is more of a buzz word than a scientific concept to be studied.
These guys think science pretty much has it all figured out, save a few "extra pieces around the edges." The arrogance is astounding. Science is nowhere near understanding the big picture.
the "big picture"?
could that picture be a creation of your arrogance? of course not...
The main thing I learn from this is that science hasn't got a clue about consciousness. If we had a buddhist on the panel we might get somewhere...
+Tom George
Well said.
+Tom George I agree with you :D
Further conscious awareness of our thoughts and feelings are definitely useful tools to utilize when examining the nature of consciousness as a whole. What science wants to do, however, is map it out and find the root emotional motivations for those thoughts and feelings and how they relate to our more evolutionary primitive inhibitions.
If the smartest scientists on earth still don't know how to explain consciousness that means that anyone else especially Buddhists do not know jack shit about it except their bullshit story's.
***** You're an ignorant one! Because you know nothing about buddha! Buddha didn't preach religion! He just analysed 'mind'!
The whole Evolution is an enigma, still Primates rave about vaccines and other chemical progress. Life is not a Nature's / Nothingness error?
How can we be sure that the people of this panel are not robots?....how can I be sure that I´m not a robot?...can robots believe in god?.....how do we know we´re alive when we don´t know what being dead is like?
As we learn more about the brain, we are very often surprised. And a lot of the findings aren't widely known, because the surprises can also be disturbing. But I think they're important to understanding consciousness. Society still clings to the idea of dualism, but there is a mountain of evidence proving that there is no separation between the body and mind. Not even between the body and brain. Hold a pencil in your teeth, which forces you to 'smile' a bit. You will feel happier. By any measure. Subjective, levels of dopamine in the reward centers of the brain, whatever. Bodily injury and paralysis cause measurable changes in the emotional capacity of people.
If you put someone in a situation of sensory deprivation, it has profound consequences on a persons consciousness. With total sensory deprivation, consciousness rapidly dissolves and only returns when normal perception resumes. I think this is very telling. And suggestive. If we create a 'new mind', a conscious system which is not connected to the same perceptive organs and placed into the same environment - could we even recognize it? Our subjective sense of whether something else is conscious - other people, our pets, etc - mostly seems to be derived from our mirror neurons. They allow perception of patterns which superficially resemble ourselves to stimulate our brains in ways similar (but weaker) to those patterns. If we see a chimpanzee widen its mouth, raise the sides of its lips, and display its teeth - smiling - we recognize the sensation of being happy because that is what we do when we are happy... and we are wrong. Chimps 'smile' like that as an act of aggression, and a warning to others they will soon attack.
So we know that our intuitive subjective sense of the internal state of a non-human (even though greatly similar) mind is not just fallible, but dangerously wrong. So what happens when we're dealing with systems that we have no intuitions about? Obviously, we will have to find a different way to convince ourselves that other minds/systems are conscious. If I had to just guess, I can see two possible futures for the concept of consciousness. First, consciousness could be revealed to be a specious concept. Like the concept of "living", continued study could lead us to the inevitable conclusion that saying "system A is conscious" offers zero information. If someone says "thing A is alive", you know absolutely nothing about that system. For every possible consequence of that, living systems have been found which lack them and non-living systems have been found which do have them. It is a meaningless distinction, an illusion. Perhaps consciousness might end up being the same thing.
On the other hand, I could see consciousness progressing the way many other concepts have in the past. We start with the belief that it is exclusive to humans and explains the differences between humans and other species. As we learn more, we will probably find that it is not exclusive to humans, that it is far more widespread than ever suspected, and humans are yet again not exceptional. And we are left at the end with the sense that there is 'something else' which must be exclusive to humans in order to explain language, poetry, art, science, etc.
What needs to be understood is that there are different levels of consciousness.
There is no understanding here
The brain is much more complicated than other organs in ALL animals, and much more so in humans. Just because we don't fully understand how it works right now, doesn't mean we never will. There's nothing mystical about it at all; in general, consciousness is an emergent property caused by many different "programs" being run simultaneously. Our senses, emotion, personality, memory, awareness, etc. all work together to produce the sensation of being conscious.
If someone is brain damaged, they show permanent deficits in those areas, end up in permanent comas, etc. So how does it make any sense whatsoever that consciousness and other brain functions are proportionally lost forever in such situations - yet some people believe that the death of the entire brain somehow brings it all back forever?
It's just nonsensical, wishful thinking.
Indeed. People often tend to favor dualism over naturalism in the subjective nature of consciousness. I would add that the narrative, story-like creation within our minds of our experiences are ultimately an illusion created by objective natural neural interactions with relation to our environment. If we were able to mimic those same neural mechanisms with technology and give it an environment to interact with and capture, call, and create memories from their own experiences, and then create abstract ideas and dreams from those changes in its environment, then that machine would be just as conscious as any other human since similar parameters for the classification of consciousness would be in place.
I think it is remarkable that academics from various disciplines can spend over an hour discussing this topic and the issues involved while making absolutely no reference to Edmund Husserl or contemporary phenomenology.
Chalmers suggested the necessity of a new phenomenology of science, the closest of what you asked sadly
I didn't get that impression at all. And what has your flimsy remark about pessimism got to do with anything? He made sound judgments throughout the talk. All 3 panelists to the left of David Chalmers said the same thing, only Kahneman was more direct in the way he said it.
I just watched human consciousness a few minutes ago and as I scrolled down the comments and read you reply I was so glad because I always thought that but you worded it much better because I was thinking the exact same thing about consciousness and couldn't exactly word it properly. Thanks Scott.
why does consciousness need to be defined? Everybody who has it knows what it is. Any definition of anything at all, is always spoken, heard, read, understood or not understood by a being with consciousness.
aren't those things contributions to the futility, meaninglessness and perniciousness of the human condition? Or parts of it?
Simply because we do not have a standardized method with which to measure consciousness does not mean that it is purely a mechanistic biological function. Simple awareness does not constitute consciousness. Computers do not have consciousness. Perhaps one day they can be programmed to simulate consciousness and emotions but they will never truly have real emotions and self awareness. Computers cannot program themselves. They do not write their own algorithms. People speculate about AI and the idea of computers becoming self aware but we may never arrive at that point. Most people who promote this idea have vested economic interests in this field of research. Humans have self awareness and the ability to chose how they respond to stimuli in their environment. This is a great example of consciousness. Computers only have predetermined functions. They cannot adapt unless we give them that ability. As humans we are not merely driven by our emotions and instincts. We are able to regulate our behavior through conscious choice. However, do we truly have free will. Perhaps. Are we ever truly altruistic. It can be argued that conscious choices are motivated solely by the instinct to evolve and improve. Is this just the selfish gene at work. This behavior may be attributed to instincts of a higher order. It is the desire to have greater experience and understanding that allows for mastery of the self and our environment. We are constantly seeking to better ourselves. Humans have a deep desire to know to and understand ourselves and the world around us. We seek knowledge either for the pleasure it provides us or for the mastery and power it brings. Can we ever escape our primal instincts. Should we completely divorce ourselves from them. That could be dangerous. Even more so is a complete lack of self awareness and a human who is completely driven by their impulses. Do we have a soul, or are we just animals of a higher order. We cannot assume that because we are unable at this moment to explain the hard problem that we must have a spiritual essence. You cannot completely divorce consciousness from physicality. However purely biological functions do not explain our subjective experiences, choices and behavior. Even with some limited self awareness most animals are unable to behave in any way other than their most basic instincts. Humans however are constantly attempting to consciously evolve, adapt and grow. This could be described as deliberate epigenetics. Hmmmmm.......there seems to be a circular argument to this idea that constantly brings us back too our biology. Can we be defined solely by our biology or are we something more. Is consciousness an inherent feature in all forms of life and the universe itself. To what degree are these various lifeforms conscious, are they merely functions, patterns and processes that have no apparent cause. There does seem to be a beautiful architecture to the universe and life. What is life. Where does it comes from and how do it all begin. We may not fully understand yet but that does not mean we should give up our attempts to grapple with these important questions or that the answers are unknowable. Perhaps are minds are not developed or evolved enough yet to be able to full comprehend immense concepts like quantum physics, consciousness, and the origins of life. There may be a limit to our abilities but if we do not stretch our intellect and mental capacities we will cease to grow, to evolve and to adapt. It is this desire and activity that makes us uniquely human. Perhaps then it is this self awarenesses and directed will that could be used as an indicator of consciousness itself.
29:38 language is important because it helps you express yourself? that's it? how could we possibly come up any kind of abstract thoughts without even being able to give them names or categorize them etc.? how could we even think? as Chomsky always relates it.
Let's talk about something that we never care to define. Then, let's say it is too fundamental to define, exactly like space and time. What? There is no way to define space?
I would like to rent a room in your house, but forget about square foot since space is too basic to define. I will rent for some time... don't worry, time is too difficult to define.
Daniel is laughing at all them: I don't know if I agree or not if that animal or that robot is conscious. I have to trust what you tell me about yourself to claim that you have consciousness.
You could be a good actor, while in reality would be a zombie. Don't eat my brain.
Between the past and the future there is no enduring boundary of time beyond a Planck Length of approximately 1.6 to the minus 35 seconds: The sensation of a "now" in which our consciousness exists arises from memories born of a non existent past and the unrealized future anticipations of imagination. To this extent consciousness and the experience of a now are illusory constructs of the mind.
sum1's been listening to joe rogan lol
Obviously the answer is nobody knows.
Consciousness is the ability of producing a narrative that corresponds to traces of memory for randomly selected segments of your life. The narrative contains data and experienced emotions associated with the data.
Whatever methods psychologists use to study cognitive abilities can be used to study the implications of this definition of consciousness.
The best scientific take of consciousness came from Marvin Minsky. All the other scientists and western philosophers I have heard talk about it just talk in circles.
The word really is best left to the Buddhists - where the word is useful in teaching meditation.
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman seems quite a bit left behind in this conversation!! Otherwise very informative...
We are having a conscious experience via our Lord & Savior Jesus. Jesus talks about it all the time in the Bible.
We step on ants, eat shrimp, run over possums, ignore squirrels, train dogs, respect apes, exploit the less well off, show up on time, same place, fifty years, sit still on stage, and you're telling us what's important?
overheard among cauliflowers; "what is a cauliflower? what is a cauliflower? what is a cauliflower? what is a cauliflower? what is a cauliflower? what is a cauliflower? what the heck are we?" what happens after pick? will we live forever?
+Freddie Mars you want to elaborate more on this pls? thx
It's funny, the journalist was trying to create conflict to make the discussion more interesting, and everyone on the stage pretty much agreed with one another nonstop for (at least) the first 20 minutes.
It's hilarious to see how the media tries to create controversy out of nothing. It always makes them look more ignorant. David Chalmers has to, at one point, remind the journalist that "Gathering data" and "analyzing data" are two dramatically different aspects of the same scientific process.
hello . the enlightened primitive would have experience of past life , after life , just as some do today . . with regards
Is everything that comes out of our mouths, our language and thoughts be whats real.
Kidnappers adultkeepers creepy
Simply because consciousness is a subjective experience doesn't mean that it isn't an object quality of the human being (apparently it is) and since we have this objective quality it must have a source (which it sounds like he believes is the human brain). I see consciousness as an emergent property, though, like David, I can also see it has maybe being the key motivating force in the existence of life at all... funny how to dialectically opposing views can be so tempting.
The Buddhist perspective on consciousness is often perceived as nihilist, but it is based on the three factors of impermanence, unsatisfactoryness and not-self. The Buddha taught that consciousness is not the self. He referred to consciousness as one of five aggregates (or khandhas) - the totality of which results in the emergence of a human being at birth but which will ultimately cease at death. He is believed to have taught: Consciousness is not the self. For if consciousness was the self, it would not lend itself to affliction and it would be possible to determine, “Let this consciousness be thus. Let this consciousness not be thus.” But precisely because consciousness is not the self, consciousness lends itself to affliction. And it is not possible to determine with regard to consciousness, “Let this consciousness be thus. Let this consciousness not be thus” (Anattalakkhana Sutta).
thank you for your addition to this discussion.
Consciousness, the origin of the universe and maybe the origin of life are the big unanswered question the may or may not be answered. It is strange that these most central questions may be the last to be answered if they are answered at all.
Yes, although Dawkins and Dennett probably don't even think consciousness really exists :) I mean, other than an emergent phenomenon in sophisticated enough brain shaped by natural selection.
Collective consciousness is the soul! Only from a metaphysical standpoint can we answer these problems! Why is there a tendency towards order rather than disorder???? Is this the influence of "God"?? What cements everything in existence!?
Consciousness can not be known by mind which is known by consciousness.
Does anyone know the specific research that Laurie Santos is talking about at around 30:30 regarding the uniquely human motivation to share thoughts? I'd like to read these sources but am not sure where to look. Any help would be appreciated.
Daniel seems to be asserting that there's no way to objectively measure reality due to the limitations of our own intuitions? Is this not an extreme kind of empiricism which makes science an impossibility at all?
None of them said anything about coming to any conclusions. It's important understand that science is a system of measuring. Rarely, if ever, are conclusions made. Rather, measurements get more and more accurate as more information becomes available. They all said that there is not enough information, as of yet, to come to any conclusion.
@Super fata I think you are right in a sense, though what I think she means is that they don´t predispose the methods, "arts" or what have you down, archaic, like we humans do. Ergo, when all the chimps that have learned a specific craft dies out, there is no one to take the art further. I may very well be wrong, but I think Robert Sapolsky wrote/talked about this.
Yes, you do calculus in your mind without the math.
Certain things you do require calculus to explain, but you do these things without necessarily having an ability to explain how.
Emergence doesn't conflict with existence. For example, locomotion is an emergent state of a car. It's a real state. It's just not a noun.
Yes, we absolutely need new definitions, new terms, new ideas, and new metaphors.
I'm surprised that Memetics was never mentioned during this talk, especially following the question - what are the evolutionary advantages of consciousness?
47:35 Anyone have any idea who Paul Neil is? I couldn't find any reference to the paper Chalmers refers to him have written in the 50s called "the complete autocerebroscopist" or something like that?
+David Watermeyer Ok got it. Its Paul Meehl's "The Complete Autocerebroscopist" in Mind, Matter and Method (1966)
+David Watermeyer Cannot find this anywhere which I guess says it all. It simply leads nowhere if we have this insane idea (seemingly held by huge numbers of unimaginative "scientists") that somehow the "physical" brain is both the source of and generator of consciousness. Its a complete and under projection and doesn't make sense.
See the work of Bernado Kastrup author of books like "Materialism is baloney". If Chalmers doesn't know of his work he surely should.
Conscionsness is an aspect of the natural universe
are you conscious? do you have subjective experience?
Robot part is very true! Japan is made them
i fully agree
just read "One Happy Dying World"
Ignorance truly is bliss then.
Consciousness = God
Namedropping, boring!
I recommend this panel discussion instead:
Alok Jha: Consciousness: the hard problem? - Discussion
The Royal Institution
These people clearly do not know about the work which is being carried out by Giulio Tononi.
Science of consciousness. Isn't this an oxymoron?
Lifeless quakademics
I usually take time to peruse through a video before watching it, especially videos like these which are long and deal with a highly sensitive issue. After watching a few two minute segments I think I'll actually commit the very short amount of free time I actually have to watching this video in its entirety. Thank You!
This subject was interesting 10 years ago, along with evolutionary psychology. It doesn't grab me anymore. I've since discovered stoicism and existentialism, philosophies that hit much closer to home what it means to be alive.
If simplicity is the purest form of confusion, then complexity is the bane of enlightenment.
And stuff.
It's clear that there is plenty of disagreement between the panelists. It's good to see a panel of experts with no woo woo merchants.
David Chalmers has no evidence that consciousness is fundamental other than we cannot yet define it fully. This a brave position which physics almost certainly can refute already. I have never seen him on the same panel as a well versed physicist.
Our understanding of consciousness will require empiricism, critical thinking and honest skepticism. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that consciousness is a supernatural rather than a natural phenomenon which all evidence suggests that it is not.
This is the supernatural box:
This is the natural box:
Get the point? How do we know which box these things go into? Fifty years ago, NDE's would be put in the supernatural box. Now, I think most scientists would agree that it fits into the other box.
All these boxes mean is it a subject that pseudo-skeptics can fit into the category that will make them accept the idea as plausible, or in the other box to be discarded?
I agree with that. Lets look at things like dreams giving us messages or telepathy. I think we are at the point where most of us can see how these things can be possible, therefore they are not longer 'supernatural'. I honestly believe we need to avoid that term, because many of these ideas, from ghosts to reincarnation, may in fact have some scientific validity, and this is the important part, that we have yet to discover! I'm not saying fairies exist, I'm saying perhaps something exists beyond our current mode of perception that we do not understand at the moment. I consider this a healthy skepticism, not an ignorant skepticism, very important difference.
EyesofNeurosis There is no scientific evidence that has ever been shown for the things you list. sorry.
Still means there's a God