Can Evolutionary Theory Explain Human Consciousness?

[gorski]

No, the correct Q is "where haven't you"?!?

 

[Spion]

No, the correct Q is "where haven't you"?!?

You should have lots of examples to refer to then. Oh, I forgot, you're talking out of your hole, and your baseless complaint of 'anti-intellectualism' is just a fig leaf for your lack of intellectual rigour.

Gosh, we didn't even have to discuss substantive issues and you're revealed yourself to be a vain fraud. Remarkable

 

[gorski]

Which "rigour" would that be: going ad hominem all the time? Twat!

 

[Spion]

Which "rigour" would that be: going ad hominem all the time? Twat!

I rest my case

 

[gorski]

Well, if you can't see your aggression in your previous posts, on the topics you obviously are not the greatest authority on, then... indeed, I rest my case...

 

[Jonti]

It's really not an assumption the brain as a computer programme (which is not just the algorithm, it's also inputs, outputs and data structures.

If we could emulate a brain as a programme, it would have its own appreciation of red - full of associations, memories and emotional richness.

You may as well say "it's not really an assumption at all - unless there is something unknown going on - which we assume not to be the case in the absence of evidence, then we really can model a a gas as a computer program (broadly speaking)"

Yes, you can model it, but no, a model is not the real thing, it would not be a real gas. That's the category error. Strong AI assumes that a model of a mind in a computer would be a real mind. But you would never assume a model of a weather system in a computer makes it rain inside the machine, not if you had any respect for the conservation of mass/energy anyway!

What is interesting about the strong AI claim is that it divorces mind from its physical substrate, it's only informatics that matters. Strong AI assumes that the physics and chemistry of actual nerve cells can shed no light whatever on the hard problem of consciousness.

 

[Jonti]

I think most of the answers here have been staring down the wrong end of the telescope. They start by assuming that we know what consciousness is and what is required is a convincing explanation of how it evolved.

My view is that you should go about it in exactly the opposite direction. We know that we evolved and the more we know about that process and about how the brain works the better our understanding of what consciousness is.

Yeah, if one starts from a disembodied sort of consciousness, that's where one will stay.

We know that conscious bodies have evolved; and that to choose is to be consciousness. It's easy to see that a body that can choose, however little, has a larger space of possible behaviours, and evolutionary advantage follows.

This shifts the problem, to one of understanding the physical basis of choice.

 

[smmudge]

Surely for a computer program to reach human-level consciousness it would have to be able to ask 'Why?'

And then it would probably self destruct.

 

[Knotted]

You may as well say "it's not really an assumption at all - unless there is something unknown going on - which we assume not to be the case in the absence of evidence, then we really can model a a gas as a computer program (broadly speaking)"

Yes, you can model it, but no, a model is not the real thing, it would not be a real gas. That's the category error. Strong AI assumes that a model of a mind in a computer would be a real mind. But you would never assume a model of a weather system in a computer makes it rain inside the machine, not if you had any respect for the conservation of mass/energy anyway!

But is this error important?

Considering the Church-Turing-Post thesis, it doesn't matter how the implementation is done - either a process can be modelled by a Turing machine or it can't and it almost certainly can barring strange physics.

In my understanding, strong AI says that the problem is basically a software problem. Weak AI says that the problem is both hardware and software. But if all the processes are computational then hardware and software are independent. We can implement the software in any universal Turing machine with sufficient memory.

So does the mystery lie in the hardware or the software? I can't imagine how considering the former can solve anything (although it might make the solution easier). Remember that the computer sitting in front of you is not just an abstract computer it is a real physical computer, but what difference does it make what its physics are? Consciousness is a software engineering problem. Surely?

What is interesting about the strong AI claim is that it divorces mind from its physical substrate, it's only informatics that matters. Strong AI assumes that the physics and chemistry of actual nerve cells can shed no light whatever on the hard problem of consciousness.

I agree that its an odd belief but how would the physics and chemistry shed light on the problem? I can't begin to see how - unless it involves non-computational processes...

 

[Knotted]

A Human Being, with all kinds of potential animals don't have [sadly, we're speaking only potentially (as not all of us get there; and of those who do, not all of us get there at the same time!)], lives in relation to his/her finite nature. I.e. one is aware of his/her limited, corporeal, vulnerable nature, and at the same time of the infinite nature of Human Spirit. In that tension between time-limited and timeless/infinite some decide to make something out of their lives and create all manner of things in the process, connecting with all the other Human Beings through the Absolute Spirit/Idea [you can also call it God, Reason and so forth].

But Hegel said pretty much the same thing about rocks. He was an idealist but certainly not a romantic dualist.

The varying density of matter is often explained by the assumption of pores; - though "to explain" means in general to refer a phenomenon back to the accepted, familiar determinations of the understanding, and no conceptions are more familiar than those of "composition," "pieces and their details," and "emptiness." Therefore nothing is clearer than to use the imaginative invention of pores to comprehend the densification of matter. These would be empty interstices, though physics does not demonstrate them, despite its attempt to speak of them as at hand and its claim to be based on experience and observation. What is beyond these and is merely assumed is the matter of thought. It does not occur to physics, however, that it has thoughts, which is true in at least two senses and here in a third sense: the pores are only imaginative inventions.

This dialectical relation between the determinate and the indeterminate, between form and content runs through all of Hegel's philosophy - not just the part dealing with human consciousness. He doesn't say, "wait, stop there, we are now dealing with human minds - we can't talk in the same way", as a romantic dualist would - rather it is all part of a dialectical whole.

What makes Hegel odd is his insistence on the primacy of the "Idea". But this was a very secure insistence. Scientific ideas could be worked into his philosophy with ease. So I can't imagine Hegel having any problem with Darwinian evolution. It would just be another moment in the development of the Idea. The modern Darwinian synthesis is especially Hegelian. Everything in flux, essence not determined by existence, a single unifying principle (natural selection) underlying the vast complexity of life. I think he would have loved it but unfortunately its difficult to say as both Hegel and his philosophy were dead by the time Darwin published Origin of Species.

Edit to add more: Incidently, the same 'criticisms' of evolution that are being aimed at Darwinian explanations of consciousness are the ones aimed at Hegel by the latter day Schelling and Kierkegaard ie. the complaint that its all too rationalistic and that there is no explanation for irrational, immediate impulse/intuition and so on. This should not be too surprising as they are both historical ('mediated') accounts of the development of consciousness.

 

[phildwyer]

What makes Hegel odd is his insistence on the primacy of the "Idea". But this was a very secure insistence. Scientific ideas could be worked into his philosophy with ease. So I can't imagine Hegel having any problem with Darwinian evolution. It would just be another moment in the development of the Idea. The modern Darwinian synthesis is especially Hegelian. Everything in flux, essence not determined by existence, a single unifying principle (natural selection) underlying the vast complexity of life. I think he would have loved it but unfortunately its difficult to say as both Hegel and his philosophy were dead by the time Darwin published Origin of Species.

Hegel would have seen Darwin, correctly, as a reductive materialist. 'The Spirit is a bone' and so forth. Hegel was of course familiar with various other theories of evolution (it should not need saying that the theory of evolution is ancient) and the version expounded by William Paley in 'Natural Theology' seems to me very close to Hegel, logically as well as chronologically.

Paley's was the book the Darwin was answering in 'The Origin of Species.' But Darwin allowed his science to be corrupted by the economics of Smith and Malthus, and so he saw the competitive adaptation of individuals as the sole causal factor behind evolution. Hegel would have identified that as an elementary error.

 

[phildwyer]

Jonti, I hate you, nerrrrr, you stink

That's a bit harsh actually. Jonti is obviously a clown and buffoon, but is he really worth our hatred? Pity tinged with contempt would seem a more appropriate response to his inane blatherings.

 

[Knotted]

Hegel would have seen Darwin, correctly, as a reductive materialist. 'The Spirit is a bone' and so forth. Hegel was of course familiar with various other theories of evolution (it should not need saying that the theory of evolution is ancient) and the version expounded by William Paley in 'Natural Theology' seems to me very close to Hegel, logically as well as chronologically.

Paley's was the book the Darwin was answering in 'The Origin of Species.' But Darwin allowed his science to be corrupted by the economics of Smith and Malthus, and so he saw the competitive adaptation of individuals as the sole causal factor behind evolution. Hegel would have identified that as an elementary error.

I can't see any common ground between Hegel and Paley to be honest. If I remember rightly, the latter's reasoning is based on pure induction - generalising from the evidence. Hegel was dismissive of this sort of thing.

On the other hand, the very fact that you consider Darwin's theory as an idea with a particular heritage underscores the point that it is more than just an inductive generalisation. Its exactly the sort of thing that Hegel would have integrated into his philosophy.

Hegel did not have a phillistine attitude to ideas he disliked, but to ideas he did not know what to do with - usually stuff to do with immediate realisation, inspiration and intuition. With Hegel everything has to be worked out in a very considered and protracted way through various determinations. This is exactly what natural selection does and it is exactly what intelligent design in all its forms does not do.

 

[phildwyer]

Hegel did not have a phillistine attitude to ideas he disliked, but to ideas he did not know what to do with - usually stuff to do with immediate realisation, inspiration and intuition. With Hegel everything has to be worked out in a very considered and protracted way through various determinations. This is exactly what natural selection does and it is exactly what intelligent design in all its forms does not do.

Why do you contrast intelligent design with natural selection? The two are often found within the same theory, as in Paley for example. I suspect that you are identifying intelligent design with creationism or Biblical literalism. That is a serious error. My objection is not to natural selection per se, but to Darwin's monocausal and unidirectional reductionism.

 

[phildwyer]

On the other hand, the very fact that you consider Darwin's theory as an idea with a particular heritage underscores the point that it is more than just an inductive generalisation. Its exactly the sort of thing that Hegel would have integrated into his philosophy.

Hegel integrated everything into his philosophy, in the sense that his philosophy explains everything (or is intended to do so). But he would not have *agreed* with Darwin's theory of evolution, because it is undialectical and materialist. He would have seen Darwin, rightly, as symptomatic of capitalism, in the sense that Darwinism reflects an analogous alienation of subject from object to that found between capital and labour.

 

[gorski]

Which "bourgeois society", understood as a "system of needs", he then rightly called "Animal Spiritual Kingdom"!

 

[Fruitloop]

There's a lot of talk on how to bridge the explanatory gap as well. You seem to be saying this is just a pattern of information processing; that when the right algorithms run (regardless of the physical substrate exercising the algorithm) consciousness would emerge. As does fruitloop ...
I think it is at least possible that the physical and chemical activity that takes place in the nervous system may be relevant.

I said nothing of the sort. If you think this then you have fundamentally misunderstood me.

 

[Fruitloop]

Something similar [to change an example slightly and substitute "Mullah" for a "scientist" in a debate with Philosophy now] goes on with such Mullah "experts" when an "outsider" dares reciprocate and pass a judgement on "his territory", which one might even know much better than the reverse is the case. I say that because Philosophers have to, by definition, study Methodology and Logics etc. and by default we know aplenty of Science. But the reverse is frequently NOT the case, sadly!!! And then a critical approach to Science is frequently mistaken for an "attack" of a "dogmatic" kind, as if we're working for the "enemy" or such friend-or-foe, black-or-white, either-or nonsense. Hair raising moments!

You could be describing phildwyer!

Just swap the philosophical terms for the scientific ones.

 

[kyser_soze]

Philosophy is a kind of species narcissicism, and philosophers have been rearguarding their intellectual territory since the physical sciences started to muscle in on what they (phils) saw as 'theirs'

Funnily enough, I was thinking about this debate (and similar threads), and what a genuinely great piece of satire H2G2's scene with Deep Thought, Majikthise and Vroomfondel is...

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Philosophy is a kind of species narcissicism,.

Care to elaborate?

 

[kyser_soze]

Well it's pretty fucking easy to work out if you know what narcissicism means, so no.

OK then - philosophy is where we hold up an intellectual mirror to ourselves and what it means to be human, and no matter which way you cut it, and as demonstrated on here, we're not just animals, we're special animals etc.

Narcissistic.

 

[Spion]

we're not just animals, we're special animals etc.

Seems a true enough statement to me.

The real question is answering why that is. And I don't think Hegelianism can answer that. It doesn't identify the link between consciousness and material reality, so is in effect just a clever-sounding religion

 

[kyser_soze]

I'd prefer different, especially since it comes with a pre-supposition of some kind of superiority (which let's face it is a Judeo-Christan hangover) over every other living thing on Earth.

I agree with your 2nd point tho. There was a review of some book in the guardian books thing on Saturday with some bloke banging on about how colours are a specific thing in their own right, not a function of light wavelengths and human interpretation - i.e. 'red' is a thing, 'blue' is a thing etc...yet another example of re-heated Platonism, which seems to be a growth industry in publishing and a gravy train I wish I could get on.

Maybe re-heating Hegel would work too...

 

[Fruitloop]

I still don't know what the fuck everyone means by consciousness. It's on its way to becoming a useless signifier that we should discard, so many and varied are its meanings.

 

[Jonti]

But is this error (the category error that Strong AI makes in assuming that a model of a mind in a computer would be a real mind) important?

...

I agree that its an odd belief but how would the physics and chemistry (of actual nerve tissue) shed light on the problem? I can't begin to see how - unless it involves non-computational processes...

Well, does the physics and chemistry of real nerve cells involve non-computational processes or not?

The thing is, strong AI does indeed make a whole raft of assumptions. it's up to the proponents of strong AI to be explicit about these assumptions, and to justify them. I agree there is a metaphysical position of rigid determinism implicit in the claims of strong AI; that this is another assumption; and that it is unhelpful in this particular context. I think that does need to be tackled head-on, but I don't want to make this post too lengthy.

The strong AI claim is that stirring pure information (whatever that is) about, regardless of its physical representation, can cause consciousness to emerge (presumably the consciousness is nevertheless somehow a property of the physical system in which the information is sloshing around). We're usually invited to imagine this data sloshing around inside some kind of electronic data processing kit, an arithmetical calculating machine of some sort.

Such engines are determinate, so even if a consciousness were to "emerge" from the churning of data inside the circuitry, that consciousness it would be unable to choose in any way. The conscious algorithms imagined by strong AI would be ineffectual, helpless witnesses, quite unable to influence their world. That's not the kind of consciousness that could have any role in evolution.

It's not quite absurd, but it does seem perverse to imagine a consciousness that is unable to make any choices. It just brings us back to the question of why does consciousness exist, if it does nothing? On the other hand, it is quite absurd to think that meaningful choices can be made in the absence of consciousness.

So it seems to me that churning information gets us nowhere. I'm more inclined to the view that consciousness adds meaning to data. Or to phrase that a little differently, consciousness accompanies not the processing of information, but the creation of information.

 

[Fruitloop]

Zizek on what it means to be a Hegelian film critic (first 30 seconds only). Remind you of anyone you know?

 

[gorski]

You could be describing phildwyer!

Just swap the philosophical terms for the scientific ones.

You can't be serious!!!

 

[Jonti]

I said nothing of the sort. If you think this then you have fundamentally misunderstood me.

The comment was addressed to gurrier.

I took your statement that causally all you need is computation to be equivalent to gurrier's position. I understand that to be that consciousness is just a pattern of information processing; when the right algorithms run on electronic data processing equipment (but actually regardless of the physical substrate exercising the algorithm) consciousness would emerge.

 

[gorski]

Philosophy is a kind of species narcissicism, and philosophers have been rearguarding their intellectual territory since the physical sciences started to muscle in on what they (phils) saw as 'theirs'.

Funny, as this is also a kind of "philosophy"... And a bloody poor one at that!!!

Muscle in? What an apt term. Not much else on their side...

 

[gorski]

The real question is answering why that is. And I don't think Hegelianism can answer that. It doesn't identify the link between consciousness and material reality, so is in effect just a clever-sounding religion

BAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! How people don't know just how little they know... And then the narcissism starts!!!