[naveensundar]

Logically speaking consciousness being "produced" from neurons doesn't any sense whatsoever. It sounds magical. What is it that is being produced? Why is not produced in other dynamic systems, e.g. a car engine? Is it complexity which produces consciousness? Or is it some substrate? Is it a function being computed which is necessary for this production?

Can a sophisticated car engine be conscious? Can a Ferris wheel be conscious? I can definitely map various bits of computation to a car engine and a Ferris wheel. If you need organic matter to have consciousness, can an extremely complex car engine made of organic matter be conscious?

One can brush aside all these rigorous questions, like almost all neuroscientists, and adopt a fideistic attitude that basically stipulates a materialistic view.

Please read more about the hard problem of consciousness [1]. There will be lots of people who will disagree, but the materialistic view of the mind has lots of cracks in it [2]. One needn't even look at [2], as so far no one has given a non-gibberish answer to [1] which doesn't appeal to one or other common fallacy.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience

[_dps]

I once did some reading about this so I'm curious for more information (since you seem to know what you're talking about).

This is probably a stupid question (my favorite kind): Are there good arguments for why a car engine isn't conscious? Isn't it just the "other minds" problem in a different form?

[Alex3917]

The main argument against it would be the theory that consciousness is something we tap into. Completely unproven, but it has a certain elegance to it. There is actually some precedent for this as an argument. Back in ancient Greece the third of the three arguments in favor of the earth being spherical was that it would be the perfect shape for it to be.

As it stands, it's completely unknown why subatomic particles have precisely the mass and charges they need in order for matter to exist, even though the chances of that are supposedly trillions and trillions against one. Perhaps because matter is designed to tap into consciousness, and the more evolved the matter the more complex the slice of consciousness it can capture. That would be my working theory at least.

[naveensundar]

You are right. It is sort of similar to the "other minds" problem. There are no ironclad arguments against a car engine not being conscious, though it seems obvious. You can have more fun of this sort reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

The SEP article below is probably the best I can find right now which talks about almost all viewpoints.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/

There is an extremely good and entertaining argument in Penrose's book Shadows of the Mind against consciousness being computational (but the book has quite a good number of flaws in its other arguments).

From a reductionist and materialistic physical standpoint we only have fundamental particles and the forces in the universe. None of these seem to be related to consciousness. It is seems magical to say that these particles then interact in complex ways to produce something fundamentally new.

David Chalmers [1], the guy who came up with the hard problem, has written a lot on this.

[1] http://consc.net/chalmers/

[_dps]

Thanks! I'll ask one more question while I have your attention.

The first thing I searched for on that SEP page was "Popper", because my "how do we know a car engine is not conscious" stems from trying to apply falsifiability to my intuitive notions. What I take from "other minds" is that other people's consciousness is not falsifiable; taken to its natural conclusion, it seems to me that the non-consciousness of an engine is also non-falsifiable. Which is actually pretty cool, to a philosophical simpleton such as myself :-)

So my question is: is there something I can read that specifically links concepts of consciousness to Popper-derived falsifiability ideas?

[naveensundar]

Yes. You are spot on. I am not able to find readable survey-type articles other than the Wikipedia article on solipsism, but the idea you described is kind of folk-knowledge among really good philosophers of mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism#Falsifiability_and_te...

I see your email in your profile. If I come across something more solid I will pass it on to you/edit this comment.

[Alex3917]

Not sure about Popper, but you might also be interested in this book:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_Studies

It tackles a lot of the philosophical problems around consciousness. I haven't read the whole thing because it's very technical and not always the best written, but what I've read is kind of interesting.

[shasta]

A philosopher is someone smart enough to ask the hard questions and dumb enough to try to answer them.

[ljf]

I agree, I almost feel an engine might be conscious.

in my mind a thermostat is a brain with just two points of being, top cold-warm enough.

i wonder what does an engine feel?

[mayanksinghal]

When I was a kid, I used to have very vivid dreams or hallucinations whenever I suffered from high fever. Nearly always the same dream, very frightening - very real to me when I was having them. What was amazing is that the dream was weird: I remember me being small. Too small for my mind - it was as if I (as in the thinker/narrator) was where the mind was and the rest of the body was so small that I couldn't fit it. My mind was floating around my head, like an aura or a chakra. The feeling, some part of it I have lost by now, was truly disturbing. The surroundings where white - marble I think. And there were huge white pillar, 100 times my size - and they were falling. And they wouldn't break when they do - they would simply fall without noise, without rubble. I was always scared to death, always running. The dream was short and sometimes I would have my parents with me in my dream. Although they were my size, I don't feel any emotion or have a though about their size, just my own.

A couple of times, I would feel that my limbs are getting bigger and bigger, while my head (possibly my mind) remains the same. I was observing it just outside my head. Not too far away, possibly from my own eyes but outside my head as my mind though still at the same position, has disconnected itself from the head. I knew I was in bed, I was arguing my own self about the feeling being unrealistic. But I remember I couldn't reason out, I felt as if I will be crushed by my own body - slowly and painfully. There is no physical pain that I could feel, just an intense fear of that it will come.

I don't think that these were near death experiences - possibly just hallucinations. Unfortunately, they were so real to me that to this day, I am in a way, still scared of them. On the other hand, I want them back because they were so real and so scary - because at no living moment in the rest of my life have I felt a similar emotion, a real fear of that magnitude. I am sharing this because I cannot believe that a psychological/mental experience can be more real than what I had felt; that NDEs is more real - that they need afterlife.

Religious theory is amazingly complete with scope to explain everything, may be with inconsistencies but still everything. Existence of God would explain everything - because he is omnipotent. The power of religion on the other hand is reducing because after so many years of scientific experiments we are able to experimentally verify alternative theories that explain much of what was unexplained before. We don't need God for minuscule things, not anymore. As of NDE today, sure physiological and psychological theories cannot explain everything about NDEs, but I believe that they will in future.

[ma2rten]

I think the parent should not have mentioned NDE, they are an interesting phenomenon, but they don't proof anything. His main argument is something else.

[onemoreact]

Windows is not produced by your computer; Windows runs on your computer they are separate concepts. The mind is a vary similar thing, it's an emergent property all the little pieces are individually understandable, it's not there until those peaces work together.

You mind works the same way. Apply a little voltage to this part of someone's brain and they are now having an out of body experience. It's just like a hardware interrupt in that it has meanings on several levels including the physical (QM) in all it's glory as well as the subjective. But, if you cut out that little area of someone's head and apply the same voltage it's not meaningful to suggest that those cells are having an out of body experience. In that context the experience is both the cascade that happens and the cells that are part of that cascade.

[mehmeta]

Sounds like you might be interested in reading GEB: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach

[naveensundar]

Yes, I have skimmed through it. It is a nicely written book, but I think the main premise is wrong. A more nuanced book is Penrose's Shadows of the Mind. It is more rigorous and has a good overview of physics and computer science, but some of its arguments have flaws.

[Alex3917]

If you're interested in the 'cracks' with regards to NDEs, definitely read The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman. That book, along with a few Terence McKenna lectures, will destroy any last vestiges of a materialistic worldview.

(To learn more about Terence McKenna, start with these:

http://www.matrixmasters.net/salon/?p=254 (also part 2 and 3)

http://www.matrixmasters.net/blogs/?p=297)

[aswanson]

It's always healthy to be versed with the opposing viewpoint, so I'd suggest reading How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker for a well articulated and evidenced materialistic thesis.

[Alex3917]

Does it actually attempt to explain qualia though?

[aswanson]

It takes steps towards doing so mechanistically, but it's silent where there aren't any answers in that area yet.

[naveensundar]

Thanks! Look forward to reading it. Your other comment on matter capturing consciousness is interesting and insightful.