[LINK] Is everything conscious?

[David]

On 8/10/24 16:26, Antony Barry wrote:
> My problem with this is that there is no clear definition of what consciousness is.  [...]

My problem with the piece in question is that distorts the whole idea of consciousness into New-Age mysticism.

As Tony says,we need to predict the behaviour of other animals.  We also need to be able to interpret the world around us generally, not just the likely taste of that rabbit or that tiger's assessment of my taste (!) but whether we need to move to higher ground because the weather looks bad.  Or whether efforts to show General Relativity is fundamentally quantum mechanical are misguided (because GR has no need of QM?).

Or indeed, what is the nature of consciousness?

My own personal and hypothetical view is that "consciousness" began as a set of purely automatic reactions to environment.  As organisms became mobile and began to form simple neural pathways, evolution would have accelerated development enormously.  And at some point probably more than one evolutionary line would have developed an awareness of their own autonomy in that environment, and I'd argue that's the dawning of consciousness.

I can't help adding that our sensory understanding of the external world is obtained through pulse-frequency modulated signals in nerve fibres, where the frequency of nerve discharges is a function of the intensity of the stimulus.  So all our sensory understanding of the world is pieced together indirectly in our brains.  I suppose we could say it's an imagined world which our species (and our evolutionary precursors) has collectively decided reflects reality.  And humanity has duly formalised it into natural language,

But stones...? NO!!

Sorry, that went on for too long!

_David Lochrin_


On 8/10/24 16:26, Antony Barry wrote:
> My problem with this is that there is no clear definition of what consciousness is. Certainly, we need to predict the behavior of other animals. How will that tasty rabbit behave when I try to catch it? If the tiger likely to want to eat me. We need an insite into their minds. Perhaps consciousness is a recursive use of predicting behavior applied to yourself. Until we can clearly define what we mean by consciousness we can't say whether rocks or trees are conscious.