Comment by robbiep | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robbiep | Hacker News Reader

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And what is wrong with 'it emerges from neural activity'?

really, it is quite an adequate solution for a species with our current level of philosophical and scientific understanding.

That doesn't mean it is right, and doesn't discount potentially other options such as something that, despite my own strong scientific background, I have a fondness for through buddhism and meditation - and which is mentioned in the original article - that there is just one consciousness we all share in.

despite my fondness for this, the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of a complex neural network is supported by the evidence that shows that damage to the brain will impair an entity's level of consciousness.

Therefore, the idea that consciousness in LIFE doesn't require the brain, or vice versa, is simply mysticism and denying the truth that we all experience

I agree with you that consciousness is quite a mystery, but in terms of the ultimate mystery I feel very strongly that the question of life, consciousness and why there is something instead of nothing is a question that goes together and that they are all intricately linked

And what is wrong with 'it emerges from neural activity'?

Nothing terribly wrong, but consider this:

a) images on the television emerge from electrical activity in the television set;

b) break the television and the the images cease.

If we didn't already know that televisions receive signals, we might suppose that one day, after our science had progressed far enough, we might understand how televisions produce all that endless content.

This is the best comment I've seen in this thread. It illustrates the key point IMO, which is that pretending like you have all of the relevant information precludes you from understanding the real cause of the phenomenon you're observing. Having a closed mind should never be celebrated as a rational thing to do even if it means not accepting the dogma du jour.

What the fuck is dogma du jour?

1. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=define+dogma

2. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=define+du+jour

I agree that "emerges" is no explanation at all.

But we can agree that the images on the TV screen are caused by the configuration of physical matter making up the TV, just like our consciousness is caused by the physical matter making up our brain.

Granted, people have subjective (i.e. feel-happy) reasons to throw out Occam's razor and suppose we have e.g. an eternal soul, but the search for the soul-receiver in the brain will just give you fits (not so bold prediction: they'll never find it, because it doesn't exist).

If we connect electrodes (or use non-invasive potential and current measurement techniques), we can reverse engineer the functionality. We see that electrons hit the screen. Where do they come from? The emitter. What controls its voltage? The amplifier. What are the inputs to it? We can see that there is a measurable signal coming to the television through the wire. There is nothing supernatural or even quantum level stuff going on.

I am aware of this line of reasoning, but it contains a subtle problem: there is no way to measure consciousness. We assume a correlation between consciousness and human-like intelligent behaviour. We assume that we are unconscious when in deep sleep, for example, but we have no way of knowing for sure. It could just be that we are not recording any memories for later reference. Long story short, no, there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that damage to brain will impair an entity's level of consciousness -- only of intelligent behaviour.

It turns out that it is precisely the claim that consciousness emerges from the brain -- given our present state of knowledge -- that is mysticism. The only possible scientific position here is to say "I don't know".

Consciousness cant' define itself? Incompleteness theorem!

That's an interesting way of looking at it.

Some problems. Why is there any reason to assume that intelligent behaviour and consciousness aren't the same thing? If a vegetative human with next to no brain function is going to be considered conscious for all intents and purposes according to what you have written above, then you are suggesting that consciousness resides somewhere else, perhaps as an artefact of 'living'.

In my more deeply reflective moments I've sometimes thought that maybe even very simpl chemical reactions, such as the conversion of carbon compounds to carbon dioxide and water, may be a form of consciousness - basically, consciousness exists where there are energy gradients and is thus deeply tied with entropy and thermodynamics.

So, that could be true, but that is different from the meaning of being human, and of having a conscious existence that is rich with relationships with friends, activities and memories, plans etc... Consciousness without memory would not be productive in our present incantations as humans- a conscious being without memory would have no language, no concept of how to act, or why, so if such an entity exists, or exists when we sleep, could you really call it conscious? What wouldn't be observing? What would it be comparing and contrasting its experiences to?

I said before that, for a species of our current level of philosophical and scientific understanding, the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of neuronal activity seems appropriate, even if it isn't complete. It is not true that this is mysticism, because in order to suggest they consciousness doesn't correlate with intelligent behaviour, you are actively claiming things that we don't know and have no proof of in order to suggest that consciousness is something other, and intelligence a subset of.

As a species we generally agree that consciousness is a property possessed by things with neural networks, and the more complex the neural network, corrected for body size, the more advanced the level of consciousness and level of self awareness. So intelligence is basically included in this definition, and although we can't really measure either well, we do know that it is the activity of neurons that leads to one, and despite the oft-pointed out incompleteness of this layer of definitions, it is both supported by available evidence and not so much of a problem, given that these are enormous questions that civilisation shall likely struggle to fully understand for as long as there are humans about to think on it

If there's no way to measure consciousness, how do you know you have it?

I commented elsewhere, linking to Integrated information theory[1] but it's relevant here also because you claim theres no way to measure consciousness, but as soon as you accept a formal definition of consciousness like IIT than there is a way to measure it, at least hypothetically. So this is a fallacy preserving the immeasurability of consciousness as a side effect of rejecting any specific formal definition of it as incomplete [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory

> there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that damage to brain will impair an entity's level of consciousness

There is loads of evidence from studying states that alter the brain.

For example, damage to certain parts of the brain produces hemispatial neglect. The person loses awareness of not just one half of the universe but the concept of that half. This is not consistent with an incorporeal soul, which would continue to make judgements about the full universe albeit with hemispatial blindness.

Then there are dissociative states, as with some migraine auras, where some aspect of self-awareness is lost, leaving the person with the sense that they are watching their own actions in the third person, but with otherwise intact behavior.

There are the dissociative anesthetics like nitrous oxide and ketamine, which create a solipsistic disconnection from the outside world without abolishing self awareness.

The memory function can become disconnected while consciousnes remains, as with some sleep disorders and drugs.

There are delirious states, seen in illness and with some drugs, where the person is conscious but experiencing imagination on the same footing as reality.

The corpus callosum connecting the two halves of the cerebrum can be severed, leaving each side with an independent partially-disconnected consciousness.

In a few sentences you brought more of value to the table than that entire article. I'm all for alternate theories, but the wilder the theory, the more evidence is required. At the very least a thorough look at the existing evidence and how it can be better explained under the banner of the new theory is required.

Saying it emerges from neural activity doesn't explain the mechanism; it's merely the result of something we don't understand.

So neurons fire and we see this pattern of activity in a state of wakefulness etc, etc... well, okay but WHY?

I would say it will never be explained until we can recreate a consciousness artificially, and since it's next to impossible to experience another's consciousness, it might be an unsolvable problem.

So neurons fire and we see this pattern of activity in a state of wakefulness ... well, okay but WHY?

We see ones and zeroes go into our ALU and the result is an operating system. Okay, but WHY?

Or, we see two molecules joining... and the result is a human baby! Okay, but WHY?

You can't necessarily see the entire outside system from micro-components.

>We see ones and zeroes go into our ALU and the result is an operating system. Okay, but WHY? >Or, we see two molecules joining... and the result is a human baby! Okay, but WHY?

Right, but we can answer those questions. We can explain how the high-level OS is written in lower-level primitives, how these correspond to machine instructions, and how those correspond to electrical impulses. You wouldn't say "oh yeah, an OS is just electrical pulses firing, there's nothing you don't already understand here", or "oh, you understand basic organic chemistry, now you understand all animals".

I'm not saying there's anything mystical to it, but there's this great big chunk that we don't understand yet, and saying "oh it's all electrical impulses" doesn't really shed any light on that.

> I would say it will never be explained until we can recreate a consciousness artificially

Even then it would probably end up being an emergent phenomena not necessarily understanble. As in you can simulate a brain perhaps in the distant future and well you have consciousness by some metrics we choose to measure it. So what? We put these bits of code in, we ran this training input set on it, and now consciousness comes out of the other end, we won't necessarily understand how and what it is.

> Saying it emerges from neural activity doesn't explain the mechanism; it's merely the result of something we don't understand.

You make an interesting point, however I think the case could be made that consciousness emerging from neural activity could be the result of emergence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

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