Kindest Regards, DrFree!
Thank you for your response.
DrFree said:
You raise some interesting issues.
I do what I can.
DrFree said:
Consciousness is not the same as experiential learning, although it requires it. I think that even animals without consciousness have some level of experiential learning.
I would hazard a guess that all creatures have some level of experiential learning, certainly any who have through whatever means figured out what is food and what is not, and when it is appropriate to flee. This would include at the very least those critters with minimal brains.
DrFree said:
Let me try an analogy. You have on your computer several programs, a browser, a word processor, maybe a spreadsheet, an address book, a calendar. Each of these programs functions independently. You can give each of these programs data, and teach it, i.e., program it, to respond in certain ways to conditions within that data. I see no reason to characterize that programmed behavior as conscious. But it is behavior; the program actively responds to the conditions it knows about. But your word processor won't change your documents based on conditions recognized by your browser. If you want your documents to reflect those conditions, you must program your word processor to respond to them.
The distinction I would see in using this analogy is that first, the typical home computer does not interface readily between programs without assistance, whereas the human brain (and presumably animal brains in general) tend to cross reference to a great degree. Second, staying with the computer analogy, is that of computing power. I suspect that consciousness requires a great deal of computing power, while “lesser” systems do not require nearly as much. Which is why our “reptilian” brain is sufficient for our autonomic nervous system and the “unconscious” duties performed. Then we step up a notch to our sub-conscious and we have our voluntary systems such as arm and leg movements. Our consciousness actually requires a great referential library of past experiences and memories to draw from and cross reference. Sensory inputs augment the memory library, which is how a particular smell can activate a distant memory. I am thinking that “choice” is a rather vague variable, in that the difference between following a smell to food and deciding randomly whether to travel to the right or the left are really two distinct mental processes.
DrFree said:
The same is true of reflex behavior. The various behaviors of lower animals are independent of one another. When food is available it eats, when a threat is imminent it flees, when a mate is available it breeds. There is likely a prioritization of reflexes that makes flight take precedence over eating, but even that is not necessary. But there is no process that the animal goes through for assessing the relative importance of the food, threat and mate in the current environment.
Perhaps, but what is comprehension? How does a critter “know” what is food and what is not when it is hungry, or what is a mate and what is not when it is “in the mood?” How does a critter distinguish between what is a mate in this moment and a competitor for food in the next, or in the case of mantids and spiders what may be a predator in the next? It seems to me there should be some elemental comprehension before one can begin to define “choice,” otherwise I would think such to be random and / or reflexive reaction.
DrFree said:
Unlike your personal computer (I should say, unlike most personal computers), complex computing systems share their data in a common database. What is learned by any subsystem is available to all of them. To achieve that requires the data to be organized into an integrated model that makes sense not only to each of the individual subsystems, but to the system as a whole. With such complexity, not only can the individual subsystems continue to provide the same functionality, but it is easy to develop relationships among them that prioritize certain behaviors based on an assessment of complex combinations of information. Consciousness is very much like a complex computing system like this. When any of its subsystems learn something about the environment, that information not only affects the behavior of that subsystem, it is available to all of the other subsystems, sometimes fast enough to inhibit the "natural" behavior of the original subsystem.
We have to be careful with encompassing terms like “all” and “any.” I am not so sure that the human memory banks are able to actively assert direct control over the autonomic system, for example. One doesn’t “think” an extra heartbeat, one doesn’t “think” one less colonic spasm. This is not to say that the autonomic system cannot be manipulated, as certain adepts of various eastern traditions have demonstrated, but that typically to the average person the autonomic system is pretty well a sealed unit, or at least a one way unit.
DrFree said:
What this means is that consciousness is the integrated comprehension of the animal's environment, or the knowledge system, for short, which becomes a subsystem of its own to broker the flow of information about conditions among the behavioral subsystems.
In higher order mammals I would agree; they have the capacity, the various programs necessary, and enough “hereditary experience” to facilitate, *
if* we are defining consciousness as some form of self-awareness. In that from the conversations I have read with Koko the gorilla, there is a distinct barrier beyond which other animals (including higher apes) do not pass, and across which humans have been quite comfortable for tens of thousands of years at least. That barrier has to do with perception of time, in particular the forward projection of time. Koko, for instance, has a very limited comprehension of “tomorrow,” let alone a year from now or a decade from now or a lifetime from now. So we really need to define what it is you are trying to define with the term consciousness, it is crucial to the discussion. Simply equating that term with choice I suppose can be done, but then it would confuse the discussion as we proceeded. I perceive consciousness really not unlike that definition China Cat provided earlier, something along the lines of self-awareness in combination with an experiential referential library that allows the human mind to “think” on a level that far surpasses any other animal.
DrFree said:
I never mentioned "self-consciousness" or "self-awareness". I thought that the notion of self, like the notion of soul, carries too much philosophical baggage to be introduced into the conversation before laying down some foundations for a discussion of consciousness.
Surely self-consciousness emerges much higher on the evolutionary tree of complexity than "simple" consciousness. We can speculate on how that happened, but I'm not sure it would be to the point.
Very well, my bad, and I am certain I bring dismay to my Buddhist friends when I reference self, but I have to work with what I have at my disposal and how I relate and understand things and try to “PC” it later. If I spend too much focus on PC upfront I tend to lose sight of what I am trying to convey, so I would rather at least make some feeble effort and then refine my presentation as I go.
Self-awareness is probably in some form in fairly simple animals, like the mosquito you mentioned. At least by the time the evolutionary chain created brains in fishes, there appears to be some sense of “self” within the greater environmental context. No doubt a simple understanding, but I would think an established referential as to what is food, what is a mate, etc. But how much of this is sub-conscious? How much is intuition / instinct?
DrFree said:
(No)…adequate theories of human behavior that don't involve recognition of the person as a thinking, choosing individual. That rules out pure physics or pure chemistry or pure biology as adequate theories.
I suppose it depends who one asks; I have certainly encountered more than one individual who fearlessly and vainly tried. Typically in my experience they tend to be overzealous atheists.
One previous discussion:
http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/dialougue-with-juan-6400.html#post88358
This relates more with some of my earlier comments.
This one:
http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/the-relation-of-atheism-to-6109.html
I believe it is the source for the preceding link-discussion,
And:
http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/creationism-intelligent-design-evolution-or-6115.html
Wherein there was a bit of point / counter-point discussion regarding what here is called reductionism and biochemical influence on the brain.
DrFree said:
Everything we do does involve physical/chemical/biological processes, but human behavior is much more than that. But it is not more by the addition of souls or minds or selves as objects in the middle of the process that constitutes the behavior.
A much more useful approach is to think of the self as the whole person, or the person as a whole. This is to reject any total reduction of the behavior of systems to a mere sum of the behaviors of the components of the system.
I think the sages of the ages have grappled with the seat of the soul and of the emotions for millenia. I always get a little tickle thinking about how some of those emotions we now associate with the heart were in the Old Testament associated with the bowels (and then I hear my mom in my head saying “don’t get your bowels in an uproar!). The location of the soul is just as difficult, I doubt it is the brain or the heart
alone but I have no way of demonstrating just what it might be. I distinguish between mind and soul, in that a person may lose their mind (go crazy or vegetative) and still maintain a soul until such time as the breath of life escapes them. I am inclined to think the “attachment” is in the belly (I visualize around the navel area), but that is based primarily on an obscure passage in the writings of Solomon along with some questionable material I read dealing with soul transference by Tibetan monks between two people. I don’t really know, but I am convinced reasonably well that mind and soul-spirit are two completely differing entities.
DrFree said:
Note that reductionism is rejected by chaos/complexity theory, both of which recognize that lower level details are too complex to ever enable prediction of the system. Hofstadter points out that with regard to conscious behavior, in many cases the details of the lower level are virtually irrelevant to understanding the system.
So whatever sins I have committed, reductionism is not one of them.
I would be interested in seeing this rejection of reductionism by chaos theory.
DrFree said:
…that does not mean that you are competing with your body. You have one set of behaviors that predispose you toward alcohol; you have another that objects to alcoholism. There are many examples of competing desires. But both sets of behaviors are part of you. They both involve your body, your feelings and your consciousness. The body is not a monolith that you have to struggle with. A person is a complex, conscious and physical system of systems that simultaneously compete and cooperate.
I don’t envision competing with my body. I see behavior as action / activity. In the sense that electrons run around inside the brain I suppose there is activity, but that is the activity of the electrons. Until the activity of the electrons is directed
willfully to make my arm pick up a beer, it is not what I consider behavior. I may have random thoughts of jumping off the Empire State building, but it is not behavior until I actually jump.
If I had to create an analogy, I suppose it would be that of a running automobile; in effect I serve the function of the brain, the engine serves the function of the vital organs, and the wheels serve the function of limbs. I can sit in the car all day, but until I turn the steering wheel or step on the gas nothing really happens except the autonomic systems. Now, once I engage a gear and give a little throttle, the car begins to
behave in the manner I as the brain direct, but until then the car simply is existing. So unless one considers inactivity as a form of activity, I am a little puzzled.
I don’t see a struggle with the body (unless one is physically challenged) because we use it so much that we are intimately familiar with each other as it were. If you had to reprogram your brain to work your hand after a stroke, then I could understand the idea of struggle with the brain, but otherwise the programming that begins at birth (in the womb?) with the mind-body connection just becomes so casual and second nature to most of us.
Now, where I can see challenge and struggle is with something like trying to kick an addiction. Once the body is comfortable with a drug or activity or some other familiar ritual, it can be a great struggle to let that ritual go, even if the mind knows better and can devise very rational reasons why to quit. This is why I suggest that addiction and addictive behavior is an aggravating factor in what it is you are attempting to look at.
