What is consciousness?

Question

As I understand it, consciousness with a mind can be considered to be self-awareness. Consciousness without a mind must be possible, or there would be no distinction between the two (and there clearly is). So, if consciousness requires no mind, can a tree posses consciousness? Can a rock? Can the wind?

Given that the turing test is nothing more than an experiment to determine how convincing an illusion of consciousness is, is all consciousness an illusion?

Leviathan: I am trying to understand the nature of consciousness. As you state it, consciousness is an illusion generated by the brain. That is absolutely fine and logical but please bear with me: If consciousness and self-awareness can not exist independantly, are they not the same thing?

Leviathan: Exactly! Wouldn't a computer displaying the traits of consciousness appear just as conscious to you as a person standing in front of you? So how can you be sure of any consciousness other than your own? Are you suggesting machines can be as conscious as people? If a computer following instructions and commands can be considered conscious, then can't all natural systems? Consider the weather. Clearly the weather is not intellegence and has no mind, but it follows the natural laws in the same way a computer does (and, indeed, the human brain does). What makes the human brain or a super-advanced future computer more special than the weather? I think the risk here is to assume consciousness relys on a mind/thought. Is that true?

Anime_Grl: That isn't the definition of consciousness. Go look it up in an encyclopedia.

Leviathan: I totally understand what you are saying, and it is very say that the origin of consciousness is still unknown. If the origin of consciousness was discovered conclusively, it would put an end to most of the philosophical questions!

Leviathan: EXACTLY! How do you know anyone is conscious except you! I am so glad someone else sees what I am trying to explain. So often people don't want to listen or don't notice I am playing 'devil's advocate' and assume I'm a nut-job for asking if trees are conscious.

If anyone is reading this, how do you know you are not the only conscious thing in the universe? How do you know your first person is not the ONLY first person?

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Leviathan: I mean no disrespect, but I have read that book and it isn't as neat as you think. The writer assumes that consciousness requires thought, but there is no evidence to base this assumption on. It is an axiom, like 1+1=2. Of course, it is accepted by people to be logical because that is how you are conditioned, but (as I am sure you know) the whole of mathematics can be re-written with a different set of axioms and it will still be logical and still hold true. Similarly, the assumption that consciousness exists only in the brain is based on the fact that the people who have examined consciousness have a brain, and they can't experience anything other than their own consciousness. I apologise if I seem to be going on about this topic, but I 'need' someone else to understand consciousness from my point of view. It is driving me insane!

Answer 1

food for thought. taken from the lines of wikipedia:

The human brain appears to have no localized center of conscious control. The brain seems to derive consciousness from interaction among numerous systems within the brain.

i thought you would find this interesting. based off of this statement alone, one must have a mind to achieve consciousness.

Answer 2

Consciousness without a mind must be possible? Says who?

Well the sound of a heartbeat is distinct from a heart so you don't have to have a heart to have a heartbeat... Or fire burns a fuel but the fire is distinct from the fuel so it must be possible to have fire without fuel, right? hmm...

Consciousness emerges from the workings of the brain. Its a physical process.

If all consciousness is an illusion, in what sense can it be said to be illusion? An AI program able to pass the Turing test could be said to be conscious - if someone said 'It could just be pretending to be conscious and intelligent' I'd say it sounds like lots of humans I know.

*I don't know if I'd say everything that was self-aware was conscious. You're conscious because you believe you are - and you can make the rest of us believe so. I think in real terms its an emergent process caused by the connections made in your brain. You can reflect on things privately. I think AI when it emerges will not be because we've designed it from scratch but because it emerges from smaller functional units. Its sad, even today neurobiologists complain they havent found the seat of consciousness - religious people obviously have an answer to that but its about as likely as finding the president of an ant colony or the leader of a flock of swirling birds.*

**Since I'm an atheist (making this an interesting forum for a discussion on consciousness) I would say it is possible for a machine to think - we are machines. We're based on squishy organic molecules but whe you think about it, we're machines. This is not to denigrate what it means to be human - its to suggest the marvellous possibilities of what we can do with machines. God knows what religious people would think when we invented a computer more intelligent than ourselves, would it make us better creators than God? That's a digression we probably should not get in to. I'm saying if a computer can pass the Turing test we should give it a tentative badge to say ok its conscious but we don't know if its in the same sense as us - but if you start arguing if it only 'believes' its conscious or acts like it is then you can argue that the situation is the same with humans. The origins of consciousness will become more apparent with advances in complexity theory, swarm logic and genetic algorithms. I feel sure the mechanisms will be wholly physical. There is a danger I suppose, attempts to pass the Turing test so far have been based on deception. A software program can prepare responses to simple questions like 'Hello?' and 'How are you?' then when its asked more complicated questions it can say something else, tacitly avoiding the question. There was a website which featured such bots interacting with humans and when you went on you were never sure which was which. It wasnt that bots were so good at pretending to be human. Humans tried to make it more fun by pretending to be bots!**

As for if I'm the only conscious person in the world, solipsim is easily refuted. If something has complex outcomes that I did not cause then there is no reason to imagine that I'm responsible. I can imagine that if I was someone else I would only be aware of my own private thoughts but it would be silly to assume that I was the only person who had them. Solipsism is discussed (and neatly refuted) in 'the fabric of reality' by David Deutsch.

Answer 3

The dictionary defines consciousness as a "quality of mind," so self awareness is a product of the mind. We have to accept a set of definitions or there can be no honest dialogue. Therefore, there is no consciousness or self awareness without a mind.

Exactly where does consciousness exist is a question only the Creator can answer ultimately. Machines and other man-made things cannot have consciousness.

Answer 4

Well, self-awareness is a mind with consciousness, not the other way around. As such, any inanimate object could be considered a mind without consciousness.

Answer 5

Yes. Consciousness is everywhere. Awareness of being conscious is another thing. In a regular dream, you are conscious in it, interact with it. But are you aware it was a dream?

Answer 6

Simply self awareness through human intelligence, animals are aware but plants and trees are not.

Answer 7

To understand everything that exist and comes into your particular observation. An ability of soul.

Strange people are most interested in locations then its working.

Answer 8

Consciousness or awareness is given to us by God. We don't have to have a brain to have awareness. We just think we do, or people try to make us think we do.

Answer 9

one level more complex than self awareness is the ability to theorize what the other aware mind might be thinking------or that it might exist---it might be implicit in the first definition--------are u thinking about this?