How working memory could give rise to consciousness(scientificamerican.com) |
How working memory could give rise to consciousness(scientificamerican.com) |
To me, consciousness is not generally that you can be aware (conscious) of things around you and can react to them, lots of things can do that.
Consciousness is a shorthand for saying that something is conscious of itself, or conscious of its own consciousness. It is the meta-ability to observe its own perceptions and thoughts. And a sense of self, a sense that the observer is the same over time.
But frankly, it’s a terrible concept and my definition is plenty flawed too. In practice it is more of a moving goalpost to denote the specialness and superiority of humans over all. That thing we can’t quite put a finger on that makes us different. It is a secular euphemism for the soul. It is not very scientific.
And that is quite problematic because the privileges we ascribe to those on the wrong side of the line fall off a cliff. We rely on that line as a foundation for so much of our morals. We have seen the catastrophes that happen when a group has a different idea about the line.
I don’t have a solution to propose, it’s hard.
Which is kind of strange because folks who achieve insight examining their own perceptions and thoughts seem to dissolve the barrier between self and not-self.
https://theconversation.com/consciousness-how-working-memory...
So, we can’t define or measure it, but we can create it?
How do you create that which is not definable or measurable?
What we perceive as "present" is just our latest memory.
Consciousness is the echo chamber of the quantum domain, temporally propagating through cognitive technology. Memory and temporal propagation (awareness) give consciousness something to do, which makes it topically interesting and addressable.
The quantum domain has a tremendous information density which scales through entanglement (by the tens of thousands or even millions in our neurons) allowing the ultra high definition holographic experience we (many of us) are familiar with.
When quantum holographic memory is understood, consciousness will be better understood. The qubit is a dead end, this will be the indicator of scientific progress.
Of course, understanding the mechanism is helpful if you want control, reliability, and precision over the phenomena, but creation can definitely happen before we can explain it.
Through engineering.
This isn't new by any stretch of the imagination. Throughout our entire history as a species, we've been building things long, long before we had the tools to understand them. We built bridges and massive cathedrals before we invented geometry. We built and optimized steam engines for a century before we developed the language of fluid dynamics to understand why those designs were optimal.
Engineering very frequently is far ahead of the science needed to explain it.
As far as consciousness goes, personally I think it's an emergent property that will arise on its own when conditions are right. It will take a lot of experimentation to establish the right conditions, and then generations of study to figure out why those conditions were ideal for consciousness to emerge.
Because realistically we can't learn about consciousness with a sample size of one (us). We need to study other consciousnesses to understand the why and hows.
animals can have offspring without understanding reproduction
I look forward to more precise definitions.
Eg.
1. The brain "does cognition".
Cognition <> consciousness.
2. Some philosophical theories have consciousness pre-figuring complex arrangements like the brain.
ie. The brain is not necessarily a pre-requisite for consciousness.
Without it we can't walk, eat, reproduce, or do anything. I like to think cost viability reasons explain consciousness. I know people prefer metaphysical or quantum magic explanations, I prefer a prosaic one - cost. It's a mechanism to keep our costs offset by gains. Cost can also explain unity - we die as one organism, not each organ on its own.
You can fantasize that you are an owl or a bat, doing so well enough can be quite convincing. Remember, wings are arms and hands (look at a skeletal picture, you will see what I mean.)
I’m also curious how you define consciousness.
This is what I came here for. Every article or commenter that attempts to deduce the roots of consciousness should first start by defining it. I have yet to see anyone even bother to seriously try.
If I spent all my time trying to figure out the fundamental forces involved in floopityjoop, but refused to ever define exactly what a floopityjoop was, you would ignore me, laugh at me, or feel pity for me.
Three pounds of meat in one human brain can do things an entire datacenter of AI can't. Like fold clothing.
[citation needed]
Of course, you can be like Daniel Denett and bite the definition bullet - he was talking about 'free-will', not consciounsess and that a chess program has the necessary properties.
But, it makes more sense to take conscious experience as more fundamental, what we are directly aware of, and try to explain everything else with that as the base.
In my experience, “intelligence” and “consciousness” are socially defined categories and can’t be viewed objectively
There’s too much social weight on those to have a firm definition because the social implications are too grave and nobody is willing to give up their philosophy for a precise definition
In the past many attempts to define who (or even what) is and is not conscious led to the exclusion of certain classes of human and animal, and from there to atrocity beyond measure. The p-zombie problem is not only fundamental, it may be the single most important question in all of philosophy and science from a "first do no harm" perspective.
It's not some academic "Umm acshually". The definition MATTERS, and can lead to real world suffering for living beings at massive scale when we get it wrong. So these regularly scheduled "Mechanism For Consciousness Discovered" blog posts that fail to define it first aren't just bad science, they're actively dangerous.
EDIT - To tie it back to this post - If we assume that working memory is involved in consciousness, we exclude people who lack short-term memory. I had a friend in high school who lost most of his due to a traumatic brain injury caused by a car accident. He was, in fact, a conscious being. Just... very, very forgetful and unable to cope well with novel situations.
Only if they can't provide a reliable citation.