Leonard Mlodinow - Can Consciousness be Non-Biological?
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- Опубліковано 4 чер 2024
- If consciousness is 100% physical, we would have to conclude that the same kind of consciousness that we experience as humans can be generated by non-biological entities (eventually). Conversely, if non-biological consciousness would somehow, someday, prove impossible, then consciousness would have to embed some nonphysical aspect. But how would we ever know?
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Leonard Mlodinow is a theoretical physicist and author, recognized for groundbreaking discoveries in physics, and as the author of five best-selling books.
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I LOVE the following quote..."Trying to find consciousness in the brain is like trying to find music in the radio"....think about it.
you're saying that the brain its anthena or a tool that can transit the self awareness?
@@flux9433 i am saying the brain is merely the receiver of consciousness, not producer.
@@Dion_Mustard you have any proof?
@@Dion_Mustard I agree. I don't even think that our consciousness is in space-time, but somehow can interact with machines (bodies) in space-time. So upon death you don't actually go anywhere. You're already there.
@@flux9433 yes. from personal experiences i have had.Out of Body states. namely, the mind/consciousness is "non-local".
I am assuming you haven't had such an experience?
And that’s as closer to truth as you’ll ever get about consciousness for a while.
The interviewer is the star here. Very good conversation!
He's the absolute best. 👍
He is GREAT
Differently comparing to guy who cant listen...
He was abrasive and kept reverting to a tautology. "Consciousness because consciousness." xD
I love that he actually challenges what those he interviews say. 👍
It's a dialogue.
I wish I had friends smart enough I could get into this stuff with
I also lack people who want to take about that. But i think its rather a matter of interest than intelligence
join a masonic lodge, that's the main topic when you climb the blue grades.
Same!
I have one friend like that (not only smart but also interested in these topics. Lots of smart people aren't) and we would literally talk for hours on end about all kinds of things.
Don't have to be smart, there is evidence or there's not for the proposition/claim, or we don't know, yet.
We benefit from being social, but in this corona-time people are more lonely and for many it is not so good. For some people it results in poor finances and financial depression can also contribute to mental depression. There is certainly a lot we can do to avoid becoming depressed, for example exercising, going for walks and keep ourselves in good physical shape.
There is a lot of memory in the body, even though we are not conscious of it. In the immune system, it can host memory cells that make us resistant to disease. If we are well trained, the muscle cells remember it, so it will be easier to become well trained again. They have found out a lot of what function different areas of the brain have, we have different kinds of memory in different parts of the brain. But it is still a mystery what consciousness is and how memory is coded.
What we choose to be concerned about and choice of friends is important. It affects the state of mind. We know that hormones are important for the state of mind and this is how many drugs work, but my point is that the state of mind also affects the hormones. And to a certain extent you can choose your state of mind.
If someone believes in something, is trained in it, hopes for it and invests in it and then it fails, then it is obvious that they become sad and it can turn into long-term depression. On a Good Friday, it may be appropriate to recall that when Jesus and his disciples were in Gethsemane, they were all sad. Jesus knew he was going to be executed. But God raised him up from the dead and that changes everything. The cross of Jesus tells of a death, but is still a life-giving and joyful message, because he rose from the dead. It gives us hope of eternal life and the glory of God and that hope does not disappoint us, because he gives us the water of life for free, by mere grace, without the requirement of any work. The love of God is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us (Rom.5,5).
One of the most important things to learn in science (and life in general I might add) is to be able to say "I dont know!"
I wish more people would be able to realise the important insight expressed through these 3 simple words!
Egoism cant allow this. You need to be important to others. Because you have value(wtf) as a human to live, and you arent priceless. Because of you have value you need to gain more attention if you want a happy life. You cant live just like that because you can be exterminated. Thats a simple truth. But of course - I dont agree with this situation. Life is priceless. You have value because you need to work for others power. You cant work if you dont want to so you need to know you are good and have value. If not - global government cant force you to do something.
Points I don’t see considered in these types of (interesting) interviews:
1) one part of a system (brain) is “aware” of (reacts to) another part of the brain
2) the “reaction” (awareness) is at least in part pictorial (obviously drawing on more parts of the system / brain)
3) this “process” leads to “proactive” “actions” vis a vis stored “values” (parameters, variables)
4) can all that be duplicated in a non-mammalian environment?
scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1974&context=ndlr
[Added: consciousness as that “inner feeling of qualia” (at ~ 10:15 min) would presumably be some additional information loops or bifurcated feedbacks of 2) awareness ... but it certainly “feels” like a separate “thing” that is separately feeling, or experiencing, the more typical mammalian “awareness” process that is used to sustain life ... but it may only be additional information processing]
The interviewee is assuming that if we were to model the brain perfectly, the model will automatically be conscious. However, where is the evidence for this? Why would it be conscious rather than just doing the computations just like any computer program right now...
There’s more to us than a computation
what he says is that if we approach the problem of consciousness in a merely scientific, therefore biological way, if we replicate the conditions of, for example, my brain, consciousness will manifest. Is it possible with the first quantum computers to check if the soul exists?
@@sabarapitame
The existence of the soul cannot be known by computation. Anything that predates the three forces cannot be known by computation. What magnetism is, is not known or whether it pre-dated the three forces or came after. It likely predated them, but that is not known for sure.
One of the great words from Prof Mlodinow was: To be able to say I don't know? (near the end of the video). At the moment science cannot explain love or hate, and so it cannot explain consciousness. Truth is nice, and CTT (closer to truth) is great in bringing in the great questions into light with some great minds.
'Consciousness' is the oldest and most enduring philosophical riddle faced by humankind. *The questions related to consciousness are as old as the realisation of ‘self’. Both the ideas of the self and of one’s consciousness are deeply interconnected* Namaste
Are the "deep connections" observable?
Can Consciousness be Non-Biological? Absolutely YES. I love Leonard Mlodinow's last statement in this video. Thank you CTT.
Excellent interview, both of them did a great job
For computer to have consciousness / mind, may have to quantize perceptions / neural signals into wave functions of time with probability distributions that connect perceptions into conscious experience for sense of meaning?
Consciousness to me is awareness, but then the implication is if one is aware, would one necessarily be self-aware? Information flow in the brain per se isn't consciousness, because so much of that information or electrical activity is occurring without our awareness. Conscious requires more than just the activity itself, but I think it requires the activity is in relationship to knowledge of self, and therefore what is around us. (just writing from my background as a PhD in neuroscience)
But a scientist / truth-seeker doesn't rest at an "I don't know" position. That's just his starting point
True. However its already a very important insight to realise "I dont know!" Often I get the impression many people pretent (to themself and others) they know about so many subjects. what life is about, whats good or bad, right or wrong and of course many things which are core subjects of naturla sciences. they too often dont realise its only there own impression which in the rarest of cases is derived from factual knowledge.
therefore I think the personal and/or scientific insight to 'not know' about a certain subject or question is a very valuable one.
Feynman said something to the effect of, "I might think about it for a little while, but if I don't make progress I might get bored and think about something else."
I love Lenny's honesty.
Biology is 1 expression of consciousness. Universe itself is an expression of divine consciousness
Do not listen to them damn orange condoms😉
Sheldrake thinks so
@Zeal! I can't, you have to discover yourself
@Stefano Portoghesi divine is everywhere. It's our inability that we can experience it
My chewing gum has flexible consciousness
I have an idea that this conversation missed something that may be important. What we called consciousness developed in an embodied form - our bodies. That may provide or influence on an ongoing basis how our minds work - at least but possibly not only at the level of perception . Think of sexual desire for instance. A sophisticated AI computer would not have the same "experience" no matter how sophisticated its algorithms . Yes conceivably you could simulate sensory stimuli but the effect would be different - perhaps equally complex but not the same.
Also the fact that we develop from an undifferentiated consciousness as babies may have a bearing here as well given what would seem to be "layers" of awareness. Eg our desires evolve with our experience. That experience is in part one deriving from a physical body.
This is just speculation clearly but the issues always seem to be missed from these sort of discussions.
You are not alone. Several renowned researchers in intelligence and consciousness have uttered similar ideas.
Personally I wonder if not desire is required for general intelligence. If you have no desires you have no motivation to learn or achieve goals or anything. It seems difficult to be intelligent and totally passive.
Of course computer AI has totally different body.
Humans have an inherited survival instinct for example. Like some people have fear of spiders, that evolution gave them to avoid poisoning. It's not a conscious thing, those fears are let's call it subconscious memory. And how does human inherit this memory? It gets passed through DNA, that is 30 gigabytes information wise. With 30 gigabytes you can store about 30 full feature movies, with coded information. So DNA not only stores information on how to build the body, but it seems to pass down this so called unconscious memory as well. The information handling that does this, the mechanics of how we inherit fears, could be described as man seeing 30 movies about survival before he's born, or somewhere within this range.
A sophisticated AI computer has a different body. It depends on the level of sophistication, but mostly the computer is made without using DNA, at least. When AI computer wakes up, it is a blank piece of paper, as opposed to human, who is a curious little hungry creature.
@@KasiusKlej , I’m not sure what point you are trying to make?
One thing I disagree with though. An AI would be a software rather than a computer. Computer hardware generally does nothing without software. And software you can preload with any information you wish. Thin it is true that the first general AI might evolve and be taught rather then be programmed.
As for the connection between mind and body my own thinking is that something can be aware without a body. If we could keep a brain alive in a vat it would possibly still be conscious.
@@mockupguy3577 How can somebody be aware without a body? Even after you removed every part of the body, except a live and wake brain, you still have a part of body left. The brain itself. Once you remove the brain, it is then that connection between mind and body gets, well, disconnected.
My point was, that AI machine does not need desire to function. If the machine was just curious, for example, without desires, it would work as well, I think.
@@KasiusKlej , a part of a body is not a body. An arm is not a body. A brain is not a body. I think what you really are trying to say is that a consciousness needs a substrate. Something to exist in. Be it a group of biological nerve cells, silicon based electronics or whatever? If so I fully agree with that.
Now we are getting into semantics, but I would say nothin can be curious without the DESIRE to investigate, test, experiment, finding out, and learn.
Max Tegmark disagrees with me, he thinks we could make a general AI without and feelings, desires, will, or motivation but I carefully disagree I think it would be very passive and in a way unable to use its intelligence if it had any .
The CNS is mainly a sensorial organ. It perceives and processes the information coming from outside, from the surrounding environment. But conciousness is reflexive, and the surrounding environment is just part of the self in the way the spanish phylosopher Ortega y Gasset said: "i am me and my circumstance".
"i am me and my circumstance".
In other words...
As I sit here, I am conscious of a multitude of things.
I can reduce the number of things of which I am conscious by a willful effort called focus.
When I have reduced the number to zero, I am conscious of nothing.
To say I am conscious of nothing is another way of saying
I am not conscious.
Thus, we are forced, by self evident logic, to acknowledge that conscious is not a container.
Leonard Mlodinow says it's "the flow of information in the brain".
Seems to me the word 'thought' means the same as "the flow of information in the brain".
And the word 'concept' means thought complexes.
Seems to me that to be conscious
is to be a process in which the very complex 'self concept'
is modulated by other thoughts
thereby potentiating subsequent behavior
(all this designed by evolution).
(In more detail...
...is modulated by other thoughts (like those arising from "circumstance" via the sense organs, memory, etc.)
so as to potentiate physical behavior (and mental behavior... like that which is synthesizing these thoughts, the origin of the physical behavior which is typing these very comments)).
Thus I am a process made of thought modulated by thoughts.
'Conscious' is merely the label of that process
and my body is but the most immediate part of y Gasset's circumstance,
the material substrate that must exist that any process come to being
including of course the conscious process.
(The self concept is destination of input, origin of output.
How is instinct enough for chickens but we are condemned to be conscious?
I blame language, culture and civilization without which
we'd have no need to be conscious).
This comment has grown unconsciously big so I'll stop here.
Cheers!
Maybe the CNS is mainly a creative guesser. Like an active evolving multiverse creating many series of varied virtual reality renderings, the brain, with it's first class simulation software that we call the mind could be, not a passive recipient of sensation, but rather a highly active creator of multiple streams of new knowledge.
@@patmoran5339 Yes. I imagine the conscious process as but one among literally many billions of unconscious processes all going along in parallel with hundreds of trillions of synaptically mediated interactions. Plenty of room in there for a personality, indeed, many of them. No doubt you've heard about multiple personality disorder (recently renamed 'Dissociative identity disorder') for example. The complexity that lies within staggers the imagination, lol.
Am I the same person I was ten years ago, twenty, thirty? I don't think so. The only thing that unifies 'me' is my memories and apparently they are all in continuous gradual flux... which is understandable given the fragile mush they are impressed on; a blow to the head or too much LDS and you become a different person :)
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL Thank you for your reply. There is quite a lot about both your first and this comment that I need to unpack. I find both of these very interesting. I will reply but it may not be today. Thanks again.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL I am attempting to abstract the meaning you intended from the comment. I think maybe you are trying to describe man as "reflexive" in consciousness like the original post of Sanchez? At any rate, I take to mean that humans are mediocre at best and likely a negative for the biosphere and are mistaken about their puffed-up image of themselves. Somewhat like this definition:
Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
Bierce, Ambrose. The Devil's Dictionary (Dover Thrift Editions) (p. 79). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.
Is that close to what you are trying to communicate?
I remember playing computer games with only 256 colors (VGA) when I was a child.
The first computer I bought was 250 MB hard drive, and I had a 3.16 Kb modem!
Still that's just about 20-25 years ago. So where is computing 20-25 years in the future?
What does it mean to topic? We live in a a stupid era when everything need to be connected to computer, information...why? Even today language is inspired by computers...why everybody need to be restricted to its era? Its not necessary. Reality is a matrix. We live in a matrix or simulation without any doubt! We are living computers/machines/AI. We are created by advanced AI. Why? Why any of those who can create anything need to be restricted to our era terms? Its so stupid. And why intelligence for others is everything what matters? We go from different times to this era but we forgot everything from past and ignore anything which isnt related to this era or customise some ideas to our times and also forgot all past connections to something bigger than only one topic - intelligence. Another evidence of stupidness. Playing computer games isnt the way to discover reality. Rather closing it to thinking in the terms of virtual reality. We live in idiocracy already.
Personal Conclusions from various sources "We Are All One Consciousness" for the following reasons:
1. In this world everything must have a cause, so that something exists because of something else, as well as ourselves.
2. It will be very saturating / boring if we have only one physical form in this world.
3. It will be very saturating / boring if all human beings have the exact same physical form / behavior.
4. Try to imagine emptying all the physical things around us only the remnants of humanity, then eliminating all human beings leaving only their memories, then removing all their memories leaving only their consciousness, then connecting that consciousness, feel who we are ??.
5. Body, mind, feelings, emotions and everything in this world is always changing, so what never changes ??, that is our true self, which is true consciousness. If everything changes2 / moves who observes, there must be something fixed to be able to observe.
6. All human beings communicate with each other is the beginning of the beginning / the future of human beings unite, only electronic devices today can unite all human beings, one day the device is implanted in the human mind and eventually man will open all access to his mind.
7. Our body is a group / accumulation of memory accumulated brought from the beginning of the birth of the first human in the world through continuous DNA binding.
8. Twins are born at the same time, what if all human beings are born at the same time ??. What happens if the birth of all human beings is not influenced by the dimensions of space and time ??
9. The twins are identical to A and B, if the whole memory of A is copied to B, what is the difference ??
10. The law of attraction (law of attraction) that our minds will attract whatever we think, because we are all like one part of the body.
11. Like some of the video recordings of ourselves there is a video as a vocalist, a video as a violinist, as a pianist, as a drummer, etc. The video2 is made into one in one video then it will produce a more interesting orchestra, something new and more productive. our world.
12. Man's greatest enemy is himself, at this time man is fighting against himself. By believing that we are all one, then the ego will fade because there is no difference between us.
13. That is why the teachings of religion command us to be grateful and beneficial to many,
If you are hurting others you are actually hurting yourself, just as if you are doing good to others you are actually doing good to yourself.
14. Could it be that we are all dreaming and our dreams meet each other at the same frequency in parallel. Have you ever, when sleeping dreamed of moving roles as someone else, it is because we are all one.
15. We are not immortal as human beings so that we have time for us to scroll through all of life.
16. "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience" ~ Stephen Covey, Have you ever felt that our age is too short, could our consciousness be immortal ?.
17. We are one, only the role is different, the memory block between life is what makes people feel different / separate. Just by brainwashing / erasing his memory then someone will be a different person but his consciousness actually remains the same.
18. The lucky thing for us is ... awareness is always towards / seeking / having intentions / desires towards good / positive / happiness despite experiencing various mistakes.
19. When we die the body and memory are destroyed, how can we remember ever being dead.
20. Why do we have to die? ", When we are told to die, later this eternal question will be asked again and we will always be there." The world is a sustainable life "~ Bruce Lipton
21. In the beginning we were one, but split through a big explosion or bigbang to become different and separate as it is now, but we are provided with a sense of love for us to be able to be reunited later.
22. There is only us and the mirror of ourselves in this world, yet there is another world out there.
23. We will always smile happily seeing each other as ourselves "How beautiful I am" seeing a different self.
24. If all consciousness is told now that they are all one if the experience gained is enough, the consciousness designed from the beginning is so different that there is so much intrigue, consciousness is created differently so that when it comes together it has an incredible consciousness experience.
25. We are indeed alone in this universe, but there are still many other universes with their own laws of nature.
26. Have you ever felt to come to a place that has never been visited but feel familiar with that place, as if we have lived in that place sometime.
27. The world is like a script of a story that is being written by the author, sometimes changed at the beginning, sometimes changed in the middle, sometimes changed at the end it all depends on us as writers, and every story has wisdom that can be taken as a lesson.
28. Hair grows on its own, heart beats on its own, blood flows on its own, ideas emerge on its own, etc., are we involved ??.
29. Imagine today there was an event that caused only you to live in this world, then who are all the people yesterday ??.
30. "If Quantum Mechanism cannot surprise you, then you do not yet understand Quantum Physics. Everything we have considered real all this time, turns out to be unreal." ~ Niels Bohr.
31. In the scale of quantum physics we are all connected to each other, even in double gap experiments proving that particles change when observed or in other words awareness is able to change reality, this has been repeatedly proven by Nobel laureate in Physics.
32. Everything we experience by our senses will eventually only be an electrical impulse in the brain, is it all real ??. We are beings who realize that we are conscious.
33. We are closer than the veins of his neck.
He breathes some of His spirit on you.
Knowing oneself means knowing one's God.
Indeed, we will return to HIM. You are far I am far, you are near I am near.
I am everywhere.
Before the existence of this world there was no material other than Him.
The True Spirit is only One, the Creator.
I agree with your prejudice.
34. Whether the Creator is only tasked with creating, is it possible that the creator does not want to try the results of his creation through another perspective.
35. There is no reincarnation, it is possible that our consciousness is synchronizing, our consciousness is divided by the speed of light so that consciousness can move and divide quickly through energy, and that is why we need sleep, that is why we often do not realize something, that is why the size of the earth is reached by the speed of light so that consciousness is divided quickly and evenly, we are like some chess pawns played by a player, that is why if we move at the speed of light, then we can penetrate the dimensions of space and time, when we die we wake up and regain consciousness as long as there are human beings living in this world.
36. Have we ever had a problem and suddenly someone came to provide a solution to the problem we are experiencing, as if someone was sent by the universe to help us in solving the problem, which is actually our own awareness that sends that person to us.
37. A thousand years ago did human beings see, hear and be trapped in their hearts about current technological advances ??. If we all tend to sin (damage) then it will be the world of hell, if we all tend to do good then it will be the world of heaven.
38. Knowledge learns objects, God who created our consciousness, does not allow God to be objects of knowledge.
39. It is not possible for human creation which is only in the form of words / symbols to represent true truth.uyty
40. Is there a meaning of being without consciousness ?? then we are adventurers of this existence.
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41. The life of the world is just a game and a joke, the one who wins the game of the world is the one who finds his true self.
42. When the existence of the world ends we will know everything.
43. My consciousness undergoes a very extraordinary life experience, feeling life experience with different forms and different places even though in fact my consciousness is always the same, wow .. I was surprised !! how wide I am.
44. Consciousness in fact does not know the concept of time, consciousness can experience / undergo into another physical form because the dimension of time can be penetrated by consciousness, as when we imagine we can act as anyone without time bound, because in this universe time can in fact materialize free, time can move straight, curved, rotate, etc. Our time travel is when our consciousness moves to a new physical experience.
45. We are an awareness, a concept that is able to answer various things.
46. Remember when you were going to leave, you were worried about losing me ??, calm down .. I was everywhere and we would always be able to meet again, believe me.
47. Without searching what is the difference between us in this world and us in a dream while sleeping just passing by without meaning
48. In conclusion, whatever role we play, it is all our own design, so just enjoy.
49. God created us to be Happy, so do not disappoint God.
50. Understand it and be Shining
inspiration:
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God created us to be Happy? Then why did God create the devil? Why does God sit back and allow 1000 children to starve to death everyday?
@@josephbishara4791 Devils don't exist, humans created them. The world would be more terrible if there weren't children who starve because human hearts would be numb because love doesn't grow.
Excellent: "I don't know." Brother James 🙏
The problem is that according to certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, the very fabric from which biology is constructed seems to be dependent on the existence of consciousness to promote the fabric into the reality that presents itself as biology. Therefore, we seem to be confronted with a "chicken/egg" dilemma here in the question of which came first? Was it the biology? Or was it the consciousness that seems to be required to be present before the biology can be promoted into reality?
So you’re postulating that biology is a mutated evolved byproduct of consciousness, rather than vice versa; are you sure you wanna go with that ?
@@readynowforever3676
Actually, I am simply agreeing with what has already been postulated (or at least implied) by, as I said, certain interpretations of quantum mechanics that suggest that without the presence of consciousness to collapse the quantum wavefunction, then what we call "reality," would simply exist as spread-out waves of some kind of superpositionally entangled fields of energy and information.
But according to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics it is not the conscious observer which alters a result of an experiment but the interaction of particles of light or photons with the super positioned particles. It is in the Feynman lectures of Physics that photons interact with let’s say an electron in two states and that interaction then makes it collapse to one state which we observe as the resultant position after the collapse of the wave function of the electron
I believe the Australian aboriginal people was right : dreamtime created reality, - and reality creates dreamtime.
@@NitinSharma-iz6zm
That makes sense until one takes into account that, theoretically, the wavefunctions of the photons should simply merge with the wavefunctions of the electrons and every other particle associated with the overall experimental setup, to the point where the entire situation spreads-out into a greater superpositioned state. So the question is, what is it that collapses this now greater configuration of spread-out waves?
Thus, it is postulated that because consciousness does not seem to be composed of the same fundamental essence as that which composes photons and electrons, then it must be consciousness that instigates the final collapse that explicates the three-dimensional features of reality (phenomena) from the waves (or correlated patterns) of quantum information (noumena).
_______
I very much agree with Leonard! Great video.
Since voice output is nearly ubiquitous in computers now and no one’s heard them make any unprompted announcements I’d tend to conclude that, no, computers are not conscious-at least not by any definition that I would recognize
That was a good one! Made me simle...
This is the simple explanation about the consciousness, imagine you’re investigating about some phenomenon and works hard for long time’s, suddenly as a results of incidents you’ll find the answers and results on the subject’s you’re working on.
Walker's book The Physics of Consciousness, while understandable at its stated very personal reason for having been written, quotes Zen sayings. Marking the idea of consciousness discovered at very ancient times and noted how it affects the individual who has grasped at it or reached at some of its levels - it merely reduces such conversations to merely clever ones attempting to analyse in human terms what is experienced and expressed by humans but whose terms are non-human subjectivity that those levels grasped indicate. Of something that is always described across civilizations & millenia as the same cosmic. Marking it as the substratum of all existences.
I get the idea that simply developing the identical facility we call a brain into an artificial system should reproduce the same operational functionality, but would the fact it was produced by another conscious being have some impact on its operation? I mean, is mechanical duplication all that's required? Surely there's more to reality (and certainly conscious reality) than this? If you look to all known elements one simple and obvious factor is the process of relating and relationship....even science in its most reductive concepts says entities respond to local action, and perhaps QF not so local action. My point is the sum of parts almost never produces the same sum once it's been reduced then reproduced in some form.
In the embryonic stage (early fetal stage) there is an abundance of nerve cells and synapses, so it seems like a competition between them to survive, those who are most in use survive, others die. Later in life, the nervous system is remodulated in response to its own activity. It is called neuron plasticity. The neurons make contact through the synapses, if there is a lot of activity through the synapse, the presynaptic neuron will make additional axon terminals (like making more lanes leading into a highway) and/or more receptors/channels for neurotransmitters (glutamate) in the synapse. If there is little activity, on the contrary it is reduced and the contact can be broken. This is considered to be the physiological basis of memory.
"Afferent neuron" gives signals to the brain. "Efferent neuron" sends signals from the brain, through the motor system to control skeletal muscles (so we control it on purpose) and through the autonomous system, it works automatically. The autonomous system is divided into three parts. 1. The enteric division the signal goes to the hormone glands. 2. The parasympathetic nervous system goes directly from the brain stem and out into the body, it gives orders of the character "fight or flight". 3. The sympathetic division goes through the spinal cord and out into the body and the order has the character "rest and digest". In 2&3 pregangliolic neurons lead to synaptic stations called ganglia, post-gangliolic neuron carry the order further to the muscles, smooth muscles, since it is automatic. The neurotransmitter is acetylcholine except for post-cangliolic neurons in the sympathetic division, where it is norepinephrine (norepinephrine). This is what causes the effect on the muscles to be the opposite.
Then we can say that information is coded by neurones and hormones. But there are only a few kinds of them. The point is the effect from the body when they are sent and the body when they are received.
Why do people continue to discuss consciousness analytically when they cannot define it? Although most people admit being conscious, that simply means they understand what others mean when they say they (themselves) are conscious and can identify with the same mental state. However, since no one can possibly know what it like for another person to be conscious, I believe it is impossible to define consciousness. Therefore it makes no sense to ask if a machine can become "conscious". Think about driving a car - you can accelerate, brake, turn, beep the horn, and so on. You can analyze all those behaviors. The only way you can analyze "driving" is in terms of those behaviors (as some insurance companies do). However, "driving" is not a state that is independent of those behaviors. There is no "driving" if you are not operating a car. Likewise, there is no "consciousness" if you are not doing something in the field of consciousness - seeing, feeling, thinking, talking, and so on. Consciousness is the stream connecting all those behaviors - it is a behavior itself. That behavior is self-reflective, involving memory, and thus appears to be "constant" in time. In fact, consciousness is a stream of self-reflective thoughts. The only constant is the person thinking them - the "ego" or id. But that is a concept built up from self-reflection. Time is a concept the brain creates to reconcile our "constant" self in the stream of an ever--changing reality. Time, Self, and Consciousness are all illusory concepts of our mind. If you define consciousness in the context of specific behaviors, then you can "test" for "consciousness" in anything - man, machine, or worm. but there will be false positives and negatives. There is no magic litmus test for consciousness.
I know what it's like to be tired, and I know you can get tired, but how do I know it's the same? So we can't talk about it.
@@bozo5632 Yes, I know what it's like to be "tired", but that doesn't mean I know what it means for you to be tired. You could have been up for 24 hrs, have low blood sugar, or have arthritis or chronic pain. That you can talk about.
Self-preservation is the fundamental driver of consciousness.
The necessity to survive and the perception of one's environment.
When you finds an answer on the project, which you’ll works for long time, you will discover too many other objects which related to your main objects which you used to work on it.
Consciousness without an object ; great book
Consciousness and Gravity two thing we interact more with than anything other things and yet these two things are still two of the biggest mysteries in humanity. Isn't it fun?
If we are being technical sure. Gravity and quantum mechanics are still very much a major mystery, unless you know something. Please do share it, there is a nobel prize waiting for you.
Life is Eternal, the Motor of the Eternal Life are the Life-Desire,
in direct extension of the Life-Desire We have the Will, (Life-Side) and Gravity, (Stuff-Side).
(with the Will, We do balance the Gravity of Earth, with our own, when We lift the cup).
Cold and Heat is the two Basic 'legs' as all and any Stuff 'walk on'.
We have in our Over-Consciousness, six eternal Abilities, Instinct, Gravity, (Heat) and Feeling, (Cold), the three first which is the Stuff-bearing basic-energies/abilities.
The other three is the Mind/Consciousness bearing abilities, Intelligence, Intuition, and Memory.
All Mind and Stuff, is a certain combination of all of them.
Thoughts is the finest Stuff. (electrical nature)
(Space ain't curved, it is the energies/motion as goes in circuits)
Maybe the large area around the brain (cerebral cortex?) can somehow quantize perceptions / neural signals in brain into wave functions of time with probability distributions that can connect perceptions into conscious experience? If not, what other area(s) of brain might quantize neural signals / perceptions into wave functions of time to make up mind?
The brain is a model making machine.
The feeling of self awareness (consciousness) is basically a model of yourself in your brain.
Models are useful because they help us perceive our world and predict our world. The brain creates models of future experiences based on past experiences. The brain evolved the ability to create models because the ability to predict the future gives an animal an obvious competitive advantage. Prey can plan how to escape, hunters can predict how to catch the prey etc. You need to know where you are and what you are doing in order to predict the future and to plan your actions.
A quantum wave function of time could provide inner feeling / sense of meaning in mind?
Advaita vedanta philosophy provides a profound answer to the question.
Could you tell me about it? :)
@@JimmyBrandZ I can but not in one or two lines. It will need much explanation to support the answer. Scientists have not been able to answer the "hard question of consciousness", which is in the nature of how can the brain, which is an "object", produce "subjective" experiences. The answer to the question highlighted to this clip is "yes" but when that is totally understood, then the answer also becomes "no", and that will be understood too, both answers with reasons that you'll be able to prove to yourself are logical but which can be reconciled. To explain all of that will take a lot of writing here, unfortunately.
@@JimmyBrandZ Why do you want to know about it? How important is it to you to know?
@@helpingeachother7007 Maybe this is a little random, but i want to know because something happened to me. Whatever i thought i knew... i know nothing about. Whatever i thought what was me.. wasn't me anymore. Mind suddenly became quiet and everything changed.
I guess i'm just searching for words on what i experienced.
I've seen Advaita vedanta mentioned around the internet before, so i just decided to ask this time. :)
I now realize (as you said) i asked for a wall of text and i apologize. Maybe you can point me somewhere instead?
Anyways... thank you. :)
@@JimmyBrandZ I can empathise. Hope you find your answers. Advaita is just one world view of things, like other philosophies including Buddhism et al. It's useful to explore Advaita already coming from a wealth of exposure to other philosophies. That way you can compare and contrast and see what fits. Advaita comes from the Hindu tradition but speaks to the philosophical position, via the Vedas, as opposed to the ritualistic practices. There are some similarities with Buddhism, but not surprising, since the Buddha came out of the Indian tradition. Alan Watts would say that Buddhism is Hinduism for export. But many differences, main one being that Buddhism won't accept permanence such as a permanent conscious being (like a God) since in their logic nothing is permanent and everything depends upon causes and conditions for their existence. Advaita Vedanta begs to differ and sees consciousness as ultimate, timeless, always existing, that is, permanent. For Buddhists, consciousness is mind and mind is everything. In Advaita, consciousness is beyond mind, beyond cognizing. Understanding these things is crucial which is why I said it's good to explore Advaita knowing other philosophies. Advaita among other things, helps to answer the question of who you are -- not social name, title, role, etcetera, but beyond that. They have several methods to probe the issue. For instance, you agree the see-er and the seen are always different? If you see a book, you're not the book. If you see a tree, you're not the tree. If you see a chair, you're not the chair. So, if you can see your body, you're not your body. If you can see your mind (you know what you're thinking, feeling, right?) then you're not your mind either. So if you're not your body and you're not your mind, then who or what are you? You're the WITNESS of body and mind, and everything there is to witness. Pure consciousness. There are other methods. For instance, when you're awake you know you're in the waking state; when you're asleep and dreaming and your mind active during the dream on awaking you know you've dreamt, but when you're in the deep sleep state and your mind inactive, when you awaken you know you were resting peacefully, sleeping like a baby yet your mind might be said to have been unconscious so how do you know you slept deeply and soundly? Advaita would say there was only consciousness at play, the real you, the WITNESS, which is why you would know that you were in a deep sleep state. These things are some elementary methods and ideas in Vedanta but to appreciate them requires much contemplation, and a good teacher perhaps. Alan Watts came to accept a combination of Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism as propounding the most useful truths about reality although he would say in the end that there is no truth and we'll never know the answers to the great mysteries of life because the eyes cannot see the eyes. I think listening to his talks are quite useful, as are Jiddu Krishnamurti's, as are Swami Sarvapriyananda's. The latter is excellent in illuminating Advaita Vedanta but look at the titles and start with some of the elementary talks, maybe about who we are. Existence, consciousness, bliss, they say. God. All of us, the Divine. The world and everything in it projected by Maya (illusion), the projector being all that there is, including the projected. All very profound but accessible. If you want to understand the Buddhists concept of consciousness/mind (those two are interchangeable to them) maybe listen to Robina Courtin. Very practical talks on that subject, and she sees the Buddha as the greatest psychologist we've ever had. Hope this helps. Best wishes.
We are not going to get anywhere until we can measure consciousness.
That means never
Very interesting discussion. I guess the question is if we assume anything that exists is made of some amount of information then does that mean that everything is conscious at some level depending on the amount of information it contains?
I start to think there are source of life wave signal and universe server data out of our body, our body is like autonomous robot it looks like stand by it own but actually also get support and connected to the source.
Diencephalon with its hormone glands is the central part of the brain at the top of the brainstem. It consists of the thalamus and hypothalamus, at the back lies the pineal gland and at the front lies hypothalamus lies with the pituitary gland at the very front. The brain stem comes under this, the upper part is the midbrain, then comes the pons and at the bottom is the medulla oblongata. Medulla oblongata regulates breathing, heart, blood circulation and digestive system. Pons also takes part in this, it regulates breathing. Most of this is then automatic, it happens even if we sleep or if we should be unconscious.
So it seems like that the limbic system and the brain stem correspond to what in the literature is called the heart, because very much basic feelings we feel by heart.
For a materialist, it is reasonable to suppose that consciousness might not require a biological matrix. As one who believes that all that exists is minds within minds, within one mind (panentheism, more or less), I think that AI (and certainly most info systems) likely cannot yield complex awareness.
The problem with this is it depends on speculation about things you could not possibly know. IOW it is a faith belief that has no foundation in underlying data. You could as well go with any of the worlds religions and save yourself the bother of inventing your own.
@@roqsteady5290 This issue might never be resolved objectively for all. Any view taken will be one of supposition or of belief--even if materialist and skeptical. There is no privileged perspective about such fundamental propositions.
I have proven to myself that some paranormal phenomena are real through investigation, supporting my view that all is conscious. Yet no amount of evidence or lack can settle the issue for all. Retaining some agnosticism about such issues seems reasonable.
@@davidbrown6340 "I have proven to myself" Proof, in the scientific sense, consists of reliable replicable observations that can be checked by any third party. People make endless claims about the paranormal, but in hundreds of years there is not a single reliable result. To cut a long story short - this is the usual nonsense and probably you have very low standards as what constitutes proof and/or are extremely gullible.
As to there being a privileged perspective, of course there is: Every single problem we have ever solved in science has a naturalistic explanation that is reducible to the laws of physics, so that is where we need to start when looking for solutions. And no! we don't claim there can not be other explanations, but if there are we don't have any way of investigating them... and haven't needed one to explain so much already that was just as unclear as consciousness before science came along.
@@roqsteady5290 Science is our best method for collectively acquiring knowledge, but some things can never be settled through science (e.g., does my wife really love me, and how much, etc).
I made the qualified claim that I was satisfied by my parapsychological research (also experience), but would never encourage someone to take my word for anything. Parapsychology has failed to prove "supernatural" phenomena are real thus far. But even if it were successful, there would be elements that would be subject to further scientific investigation, yet some that would not.
We love what we can learn from science, but do well to understand what is cannot address.
I firstly understood the question as “ can consciousness be other thing than the product of a biological process ?”
Human to conscious AI: You say you are conscious, but your brain is just a bunch of chips.
Conscious AI to human: You say you are conscious, but your brain is just a lump of meat.
Imagine humans that take in the necessary information and through computation they act on it. But they aren't aware, they don't ''hear'' the thought they think, don't ''see' the scene they're it, they don't experience any sensory information or any thoughts. They would have will or intention, but wouldn't know what it is. How can their brain, a computer, see the world around them while there's no person aware of it? When we have the intention to to calculate 3 cubed does the consciousness just sit back and look at the brain's thoughts and the intermediate steps?
Yes.
If we cannot describe or understand fully what consciousness is, then how is it that we think we can replicate it?
A crucially-important point, well said!
Music? That's easy to replicate
Hey Allen... I agree with you 100%
Consciousness is Existence. Bcz something exists only if we know it.
Exactly ! The most purest knowlege of something's existence which is equivalent to its own existence (not intellectual ofcourse) is what consciousness is. Intellectual knowledge works by comparison. From things it has seen before.
So simple it eludes the "intellectuals".
But have they forgotten neuroplasticity, that the nerves make contacts through synapses and expand contact as needed? We learn in this way and what we learn depends to some extent on what we choose to learn. And then we may now wonder if humans are able to appreciate themselves more than computers, what may make us appreciate ourselves and each other more than machines?
The nerve thread (axon) sends an electrical impulse, no more coding than that. Through a synapse, it can be passed on to another nerve cell. Some of the synapses are electrical, ion passes through a narrow channel to the next nerve cell. Others are chemical, neurotransmitters are sent over the synaptic cleft, they bind to protein on the post-synapse, these proteins are pores and the neurotransmitter becomes crucial for whether or not they should open up, which then affects whether or not the postsynaptic nerve cell should pass the signal on.
A cell has protein that is ion channels in the cell wall, they are selective, so there will be more Na+ outside the cell and more K+ inside the cell. The sodium-potassium channel emits three Na+ out for each time it sends two K+ in, so the cell becomes negative inside and positive externally. Repeated channels come into play, but the result is a voltage of 60-80 mV above the cell wall.
What is special about a nerve cell is that it is stimulated to send electrical pulses, by receiving signals from other nerve cells, the sensory neurons are stimulated through the senses. The nerve cell has small treads called dendrites and synapses, where it gets voltage differences over the cell wall that is collected in a funnel (axon hillock), where it is decided whether to send such an electric pulse through the nerve tread (axon). The pulse is a short-lived voltage of about 35mv is generated with the opposite sign, a voltage difference of about 90 mv, it is sent as an electric pulse through the axon.
The more complex the organism is, the more its consciousness manifests itself. In my opinion, consciousness is the most powerful force in nature. The consequence of consciousness is free will. A force that manifests its quantum side, in a world of classical physics.
Can plastic, transistors and metal be conducive of counciousness ? Humans need to develop a material that is comparable to DNA or RNA to have true artificial intelligence? How can plastic and silicon or other materials we have produce counciousness? I don't see it....
The basic assumptions that the nature of consciousness is the result of the brain is so hard to step out of for some.
Would such an invention know pain, heat, cold, love, hatred, would it have any awareness of the universe or existence?
So then theoretically I can be a simulated consciousness as a bilogical entity?
I think Neuroplasticity like property would be hard to develop for an abiological conciousness. Because neuroplasticity is what drives spontanity and aquiring new connects...i think this type of property would be difficult to acheive in a abiological conciousness.
If it were modeled in silicon, for example, the plasticity could come from changing connections on the chip.
Seems like biological systems won't have a monopoly on plasticity, just that the non biological mechanisms may be different and perhaps not so goopy.
The question should be can pure physical processes, biological and/or electronic produce consciousness as it exists in human subjects.
The CNS operates in the analog domain, it is plastic, not fixed so it gets modified, it has several layers of operation, many of which we can not control but strongly related to each other, it has billions of individual sensors. It is very unlikely that it will ever get replicated by a digital device, not even close to what the real thing is. It seems more difficult than finding a way to travel faster than light.
If consciousness can't be explained by physical laws then how can we say AI consciousness.
We can't explain consciousness in terms of the laws of physics, but that does not imply that conciousness is not some emergent property of physics.
Question for materialists: What is the evolutionary purpose of subjective experience if p-zombies are just as good at survival as conscious humans?
Answer : there was no choice evolutionarily or otherwise to be rid of consciousness
Every birth is a question asked by Nature and answered by Death.
the right question to start with is - can we find new physics by investigating how the human brain works (or more generally, how life works). my answer is certainly yes.
Sir Roger Penrose believes in this also)
to claim that we already know the basic physical laws that govern the activity of the human’s brain, is very speculative on my view for we do not know the basic physical laws that govern our universe to be able to understand how the most complex known thing in the universe appeared as a result of its long evolution and how it works on the fundamental level..
Awareness is known by awareness alone.
Makes sense. Like the eyes cannot see the eyes.
Consciousness is a ‘recording’ of memory as filming a movie . Saving memories allows consciousness to exist to remain ‘alive’. Memory includes personality since it determines decisions and behavior which influence the memory in the first place ..... consciousness are uploads!
@ Memory is the highest of the consciousness' six eternal abilities, it bring Us from word to word, from day to day, from life to life, imagine if the memory could be taken away, no You can't imagine any thing without the memory.
Also Mr. No AI have another good point,
because Intelligence can never be artificial.
@ If We imagine, that is were possible the take the Memory away, then You would Not be able to make any comments at all.
How can You feel offended if Feeling did not exists ?
Do You think (believe) that calculators can calculate ?
Individual thinking is Not forbidden.
The first person perspective "I" is not the Soul but Conscious Mind. Soul stay behind that level. Otherwise no one would doubt him talking as Soul.,
Another interesting thing is that memories can be retrieved but without associated same level of feelings and emotions of that time. May be those belongs to non physical soul.
@Stefano PortoghesiThese are thoughts only. But what in you generated an urge through your conscious-mind to your brain to reply me and why, ask yourself. Is that your Soul?
You should all read Ray Kurzweil books. Age of the thinking machine and age of the spiritual machine. Enlightening despite being written 20 plus years.
Machine was in XIX century. Today we have computers and future AI concepts but next happen too. So why machine when this term was good for past years and doesnt acquire to human nature. We arent any machine!
I ❤ Ernest " I don't know "
Why would you attempt to ask a question without even defining the terms in the question?
I don't know.
I like Mlodinow,
GPT 3 Artificial Intellect is pretty convincing... Quite scary too.
Consciousness within Universe is out side of sistem which ataches on to it when becoming that sistem complex enough.Consciousnessc can be also Astronomical type of consciousness being immerged into Astronomical level of time.That consciousness is oriented into it self space-time,which is the case with one or anny Galaxy or even entire Universe.Our tipe of consciousness is oriented from in to outside,but consciousness maker is outside of us.Conscious sistem has its structure in order to become conscious,self awerness is based on memory,heuristic cloud of neurons,vision and auditive sistem and is always self distinguisehed,separated from outside what have to be in informatics mode worked out ,understood ,in order to survive within own Biotop.All animals has certain and typical levell of consciousness.Conscious micrchip is possible to construct,atached to sensors.If not on the base of silicium than on the base of qunatum mikrochip.That form of consciousness is what shall do open to us doors of the Universe,time shall become irrelevant to that type of our future consciousness.Our Biological type of consciousness is just first lelementary grade in conquist of Unverse.Puprose of taht future consciousness is to become equal with Astronomical type of consciousness.Our type of Biological and future non Biological type of consciousness is just tool of Astronomical consciousness which does effort to understand it self.From Physics state of the Earth even Earth,Palnet,can be conscious in Astronomical space time dimension.All Universe posses quantum type of consciousness.Universe is immerged into that type of consciousness.Two games are in question,from micro to macro and from macro to micro,and understanding of it.By it self.We are part of God and God is by itself born trough Big Bang.Matter without it has no sense.Human Brain target is to become trough time of own egsistence merged with outside by understanding that outside.gathering of knowledge is main reason why Brains,of all type ,egsist.Even virus has its own type of consciousness.And there is how it goes with consciousness,from virus up to human Brain and beyond.All is arround us and in us,think holistic mode upon consciousness within Universe.
NTS: refut/80
Biological systems are under a threat to die, and have to constantly check and regulate organ functions. And they can decide to override autonomic regulation if environmental circumstances demand action. If this basic need to survive and all the connections associated with it is an important part of conciousness, then it would be needed to replicate this in a synthetic system too. I wonder how. A computer with highly fluctuating and insecure power input, dangers of overheating etc?
Consciousness is the darnest thing!! 🤷♂️
Is he not assuming that all physical laws are computable. Many notable theoretical biologists have argued that living organisms have non-computable models.
I thought they were going to touch on whether or not our thoughts exist in the physical world ie made of atoms, electrons etc. I would think they don't exist in the physical world. They never did define consciousness. I think it's simply "thinking" and I think all living creatures think.
Well, that was painful. Perhaps one should not discuss philosophical questions with people who quite clearly do not understand them.
And not discuss science with philosophers
I don't think he didn't understand the question. I think it's a matter of framing. And it really does seem to come down to the argument between materialism vs. dualism. Materialism would suggest non-biological consciousness is entirely possible, even possibly a component of reality in a fundamental sense. Dualists would say that depends on what the non-physical component of consciousness is.
We're not properly equipped to answer this question yet, and I don't think we will be for a while. But having this question informing our explorations of the topic is of some benefit.
Almost everyone who thinks about this has ideas, and we don't have enough data or awareness yet to refute most of those ideas. I do suspect that our singular perspectives of the world in general excludes purely synaptic activity as the mechanism, as I believe our perceptions would be more fragmented if this alone, as slow as it is, were the mechanism. Beyond that, it's throwing darts with a blindfold on at the moment.
@@williamsteveling8321 It's not necessarily materialism vs dualism. It could be materialism vs idealism. Like Paul Davis once wrote, "we did well to reject a ghost in the machine, but not because there isn't a ghost, but because there is no machine." Which fits nicely with Max Planck's insistence there is no matter as such.
@@geralddecaire6164 It could also be materialism vs immateralism, as philosophy is much unexplored science. Particularly so in answering a simple question. Are there things that are half material half immaterial? Dualism avoids that question, but if there are such things, then dualism is wrong, since a dualist knows only of two categories and not about this third one.
@@KasiusKlej I don't believe there can be a third option. Truth is, if you go small enough, matter no longer makes any sense and what we have instead are mathematical probabilities and non descript information without a medium or carrier. So the real question isn't how non matter effects changes in matter, but how non- matter can effect changes in non-matter. That's a head twister, for sure, but at least we have a starting point where we can no longer say these interacting concepts are incompatible.
To many spiritual traditions, and philosophical ones, the consciousness we feel is only a glimpse of the actual consciousness in this giant universal mind we call the universe, or god. Whatever project this universal mind is on, it has definitely set itself upon merging biological and cybernetic life with haste, to generate a new expression of itself, we are only a tiny part of this process. a greater consciousness is at work.
As someone has put it, measuring consciousness is like measure a scale with the same scale. Can't do it.
You need another scale to measure the scale. "God" is just a value assignment to that special other scale that measures our consciousness.
Note:by god I don't mean abrahamic religions. They're totally different things. They didn't use term "god" to scale our consciousness but as a function to emancipate people in my opinion.
Interesting
Talk with people who had an NDE.
A meaningless concept
@@andrebrown8969 I agree, your sense of self and awareness are meaningless concepts.
@Daniel Paulson But they die and have an experience. People not see teaching from their life either. Everyone with a complex NDE says the same thing (complex because many have just a short one). But if they see the depth of our life then the answer is the same from everyone who died and brought back. Why are we here, what is this, the answer is all there since science started to bring back death people.
@Daniel Paulson Your thoughts are this, because you didn't read much NDE or talk with people who had one. I started to explain the whole thing to you, but i realised it would simply take too many sentences and i don't think there is point to do it.
But let's just say one thing. You can't dismiss things based on some made up facts or simplistic thinking. You need to look into the subject deeply. I hear these things that you say from lots of other people too, because they read a comment like yours and it keeps getting copied without looking into the subject. Which is sad.
//Sorry for my english if i made mistakes.
How is the Universe sufficiently aware of itself that "knowingly" employs structure/laws that ensure some sort of consistency? Consistency is no logical necessity before typical notions of reality come to be. In fact inconsistency would be a more reasonable expectation from some random mix of unbounded potentiality. Given that, it kind of implies that exist some higher order process(es) which precede the manifestation of prosaic physical laws and structure and that biases particular outcomes toward the consistent and/or other things(feelings?). If it was the case exists such meta processes, then all the prosaic stuff down to the quantum would be suffused with some degree of primordial awareness of being a part of something larger and for parts in aggregate, this elemental property of awareness could reasonably be concentrated and ordered into varying degrees of consciousness. Of course all this implies the Laws of physics as we understand them today and perhaps the epistemology behind them, are insufficiently able to resolve some aspects of reality...
Consciousness is fundamental reality in my opinion. The logical problems, like you describe, arise when people try to push the material as fundamental reality.
If you disregard all the outside bullshit, sit and think for yourself : ask yourself why would you assume the material universe is fundamental reality?
It's more reasonable to establish consciousness as fundamental reality, until proven otherwise.
When you do that, things will make much more sense and at the end of the day, all we can do is go with the option that makes the most sense.
Edit : An answer to your opening question : because all there is, is consciousness - the universe is part of a consciousness. That's the answer that makes the most sense.
If you're interested in researching, check out Alan Watts on UA-cam.
@@paulb6805 Hi Paul, given it's subjectivity consciousness (in contrast to science), drawing the lines for arguments around all this is tricky . I don't think is reasonable to think consciousness is fundamental because it seems to "complex" to just exist ex nihilo given all it's flavours(feelings,awareness,temporality etc). Personally I tried to construct an argument bottom up by logical necessity that there are degrees of awareness ie some sort of proto consciousness and that it's the by product of something beyond physical law that just happens to be miraculously consistent everywhere and when. Of course the maths is consistent but maths doesn't have an everywhere and when to be the reason.
Like i said it's tricky and nobody really has a grasp of it, but that's what makes it so interesting. Thanks for reply and suggestion. May your self awareness serve you well in life, cheerio.
The internet observes, but does it have empathy? Does it love or hate? Does it self identify? Does it ask why is there anything?
A hundred years ago people said that life was something that physical laws could never explain, and that is when Watson and Crick arrived.
Non biological entities, could actually be another form of life, that we don’t fully understand yet
Or we are an entity temporarily in a biological body.
That’s about it folks, he summed it all up after everything was said and done, “ I don’t know” yep we just don’t know and so far it looks like we cannot know. Now that is a fact.
Just because we do not know currently is not a good argument that we will never know. In the past it has always "looked" like consciousness is something that cannot be known sounds like one of the the philosophy of Empiricism "derivation" fallacy that the future will resemble the past.
@@patmoran5339 EXactly!!! Now your thinking.
I wonder if the inner feeling of "qualia" is anything special. It seems one can disrupt it with with alcohol (dulling of the senses, sharpness of the experience), psilocybin (dissolution of the sense of "self"), general anesthesia (totally "out of it"). It maybe a system property that integrates all kinds of information, with a certain "center", which we call the "self".
I wonder the same. My wife is a sleepwalker. I can have conversations of a few sentences with her every now and then. Who am I talking to? Is it her? A part of her?
What is "qualia"?
If going on what the scientist believes that consciousness is a result of interconnectivity and complexity
and that it can be transferred to other medium ie silicone based computers then he must also believe in intelligent design, as future conscious AI systems will have been designed not evolved. Why
then the resistance to humans coming about in the same way of being designed, why is it humans are the entities that came from the primordial soup and not the design process. The scientist is more than happy to endorse that AI was gifted their being from humans ? Will AI systems millions of years from now when humans have long been purged from existence deny their creators and also follow the spontaneous random theory of their genesis as to believe they were created by mere dumb humans will surely be a blow to their egos
If I were asked to form a more muddled and confused comment than the one I just read by you, I do not think I could do it.
The word evolve means change gradually. Lots of things evolve. There are lots of different pressures that cause evolution. Consider airplanes. Over the last 117 years airplanes have evolved from that first contraption built by the Wright brothers to the thousands of different flying machines that we enjoy today. This evolution was the product of intelligent design by humans guided by the wants and needs of humans. Humans wanting a fast and inexpensive way to travel large distances led to planes like the Boeing 747.
Consider language. The people who live in the Canadian province of Quebec speak French. People who live in France speak French. However, French speakers from Quebec and France can barely understand one another. The origin of Quebec French is settlers who migrated from France. Languages evolve. The French language in France evolved and the French language in Quebec evolved. The two dialects are now quite different. Small changes add up over time. In a thousand years (or even much less) they could become as different as English and German.
Unlike the evolution of airplanes, the evolution of language has no intelligent designer involved. Languages change randomly. No one directs how a language will change. There are no goals that direct language evolution.
In biological populations evolution is driven by random mutations guided by some sort of selection pressure. If the selection pressure is intelligent, then evolution can be quite rapid and goal oriented. The example I like is the creation by evolution of broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, etc. from wild cabbage. This type of evolution is the result of intelligent humans making very specific selections. In contrast, the evolution of the myriad biological species which we observe today in nature is the result of natural selection acting on variations. Like language, this type of evolution does not involve an intelligent designer.
Most life is not designed. Life is not created in a factory. Consider my sister's cat. That cat was not built in a factory. It was not designed. It developed from a single cell containing a random mix of DNA from a female cat (its mother) and a male cat (its father). Likewise, no one designed me; I too have parents and I was once a single cell. If it were the case that I was designed and built in some factory, I would have a number of complaints. Why is my eyesight so poor? Why do I like eating things full of sugar? Why do I get kidney stones?
You seem to think that evolution and intelligent design are incompatible. They are not. As illustrated above you can have evolution with or without design (intelligent or not). Anything that gradually changes can be said to evolve because that is what the word evolve means.
You refer to something called the "spontaneous random theory." What the hell is that? It sounds like nonsense. I googled it and found nothing. Why would an advanced future AI be influenced by some meaningless nonsense that you have just made up.
Some people believe that the first human was a pile of dirt that "god" breathed on. The application of this god's breath on the dirt caused the dirt to transform into a fully functional adult human male. Is that what you believe?
You're right, to have the intention subconsciously or not to create intelligent life thru only human endeavor (this is an important distinction) then a Creator intelligent design seems to be the template. If that AI is created by the mutual endeavor of many different players, not created by purpose but allowed to happen, it tends to transcend and be hard to perceive from a "lower" level...does one of the bacteria in my gut have a clue as to my identity? What is identity but the manifestation of AI?
Because science is a modern arrogant philosophy...thats all. Ego is sooooo important.
If your argument is in favor of an intelligent designer (god) being involved in our existence, there are many reasons to doubt it. Not the least of which is our design (and that of basically everything other form of life we know of) isn't exactly intelligent. While there are tons of things about the human body that are jaw-droppingly amazing, there are plenty of oddities that don't really seem all that smart. 'Putting the sewer system next to the entertainment section' is a common example, but also consider how brutal the earth is... a human 'dying from exposure' is possible. In most climates around the world, you need shelter just to survive. Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanos, blizzards, radioactive elements, poisonous life forms... the list goes on, and that's just when you stay on the earth. Going out into space is even more dangerous. If an intelligent designer built us to live here, he's a masochist.
On the other hand, what you're talking about is one of the conclusions of simulation theory. If we are eventually able to simulate a consciousness, and then eventually able to create worlds where those consciousnesses can reside, those people in that simulated world should be able to create their own simulations, ad infinitum. If that's the case, being the beginning of that chain of simulations is statistically unlikely.
Either way, no matter how much you try to justify the existence of an intelligent creator, it doesn't really lead to a conclusion. None of that proves that the Christian god is any more real than a Hindu god, or an Egyptian god, or anything else. So you can't begin with your conclusion (god exists) and use reasoning like this to justify it, unless you have other evidence of your specific god existing.
Funny. GPT-3 actually believe in God! (Search for the chat) l don't know if it is shocking to any AI entusiast, but I bet most of those people are atheists. Perhaps it will be patched in later versions.
consciousness might mingle with emotions, so it can be different from one person to another
This series is absolutely engrossing, but it brings to mind, will all of this speculation ever come to pass? The Big Question being are all of the Nuclear Powers that are popping up intending to leave their bombs to rust, and their hard work creating them to waste I hate to think this way, but...I THINK NOT?
Truth is more valuable than science.
Mr. Penrose says consciousness is not mechanical and computers cannot emulate it. He explains it well in one of his videos.
seeing as how it’s all just energy
consciousness is the combination of ALL forces, would it not be,,? ... but unless it’s broKen.
Read Dr. David Hawkins Power vs Force. . . would like your opinion
It felt like talking to a copy and pasted schizoid left-brained zeitgeist. He had a little more insight than the typical person knowing that he's putting his faith into naturalism, though. If anything this conversation reminded me how full of mysteries the world is, and how easy it is to be out of touch with them
Interview Dr. Bernardo Kastrup
Don't hold your breath...
In evolution Many life forms had the chance but Human brain has been lucky enough to able to adapt extra ordinarily organic electronic mirroring the quantum level.
Every THING began as an idea------just the way the creative process works.
Can Consciousness be Non-Biological?
Answer: a basketball theory is not a cooking theory
People can be very reluctant to consider that consciousness may be, likely is, entirely consequent on the physical structure and interactions in the brain (as Mlodinow suggests). Mystifying consciousness (and "free will") is often the last resort of the formerly religious who have rejected conventional religions (for being obviously absurd), but still have the need to view themselves as special snowflakes in a special universe with special laws that apply to them and not to say ants and cockroaches.
It is snowflakes all the way down. 😄
If we describe consciousness as greater awareness, then a flock of small birds that creates a greater awareness field using sound have accomplished this. Each bird is a biological unit but I wouldn't call the greater awareness system a biological unit. In a way, humans are trying to emulate this while having the greater awareness already internalized.
Flock-instinct, Group-consciousness, morphic resonance,
and modern time illiteracy,
biological, organic, part of the development.