Friday quote: Nicholas Humphrey on consciousness
by KrauzeI am reading the latest attack on intelligent design, written by the world's leading scientists and thinkers, and it's chock-full of hillarious quotes. Apparently, the world's leading scientists and thinkers seem to have bought into a lot of sloppy reasoning. Like in this quote, from Nicholas Humphrey, "School Professor at the London School of Economics", on why consciousness must be an illusion:
"Our starting assumption as scientists ought to be that on some level consciousness has to be an illusion. The reason is obvious: If nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness seems to have, then consciousness cannot exist as a thing in the physical world. So while we should concede that as conscious subjects we do have a valid experience of there being something in our minds that the rules of the physical universe doesn't apply to, this has to be all it is – the experience of something in our minds."
Nicholas Humphrey, "Consciousness: The Achilles Heel of Darwinism? Thank God, Not Quite", in John Brockman (ed.), Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement (Vintage, 2006), pp. 58-9. Original emphasis.
I don't think professor Humphrey does much work around the house. Hitting your own finger with a hammer is enough to convince most people that although pain is only an "experience of something in our minds", it is not an illusion.
June 23rd, 2006 at 7:25 am
I thought science was supposed to take reality as a starting point. It is absolutely hilarious that they would take probably the only universally-experienced empirical fact as a falsehood. Hilarious!
Comment by johnnyb — June 23, 2006 @ 7:25 am
June 23rd, 2006 at 10:55 am
Wow, that's a whole new level of nonsense. An illusion is itself a conscious experience, so an "illusion of consciousness" is a contradiction in terms. Obviously, if you're having an illusion, you must be conscious. Will Humphrey say next that the illusion of consciousness is only an illusion? I've heard it claimed before that conscious will is an illusion, which is incoherent in itself, though it's not as immediately obvious, but this takes the cake!
So, I suppose that our conscious experience of the physical world must be an illusion then, because nothing in the physical world can have the properties of our consciousness of the physical world
. In all seriousness now, if nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness has, then the obvious implication is that the physical world isn't the only thing that exists, at least for those of us who value logical coherence over materialism. For those of us who argue that materialism is logically absurd, it's nice to have a "leading mind" like Humphrey just step right in it.
Comment by Deuce — June 23, 2006 @ 10:55 am
June 23rd, 2006 at 11:15 am
What gets me in the Great Zombie Debates is how anyone who actually believes their own consciousness is an illusion could argue that any other human (scientific or not) should take their word for it – since they're not conscious and all. Or why a Zombie would even bother making any sort of argument in the first place, given that no one is capable of believing anything but what their programming and brain chemicals force them to believe. Who the heck are they trying to convince? Themselves???
Such solipsism lulled me sleep, an hour or two or so…
I wakeny slow and took a peep, but still no lady show!
Then suddy on a little twig I thought I see a sight -
a tiny little tiny pig that sing with all its might!
'I thought you were a lady,' I giggled, well I may…
To my surprise the lady got up and flew away!
[Apologies to John Lennon's "I Sat Blonely Down a Tree", A Spaniard In His Own Write]
Comment by Joy — June 23, 2006 @ 11:15 am
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Isn't that bok a hoot though? There isn't a single chapter that I can recall that could not be made mincemeat of. One could write an entire book pointing out the Unintelligent Thought that appears throughout it's pages.
Comment by Mung — June 23, 2006 @ 1:48 pm
June 23rd, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Having a PhD doesn't prevent someone from blathering. Is Professor Humphrey aware that without consiousness he wouldn't be able to exprience physical world?
What an oxymoron?! The only gateway that enables Professor Humphrey to experience physical reality is his consiousness. His thoughts, experiences and his scientific notions are a product of his consiousness. So saying consciousness is an illusion, is plain silly. If consiousness is an illusion, consequently the physical world must be an illusion too.
A question for Mr. Humphrey:
"If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody's around, does it make a sound?"
Bonus question from Morpheus:
"How do you define 'real'?"
Comment by Farshad — June 23, 2006 @ 2:04 pm
June 23rd, 2006 at 3:55 pm
To boil it down: "There isn't any such thing as subjective appearance. It's only a subjective appearance that there is subjective appearance". It's a self-contradictory non-statement, the kind of bald, straightforward, in-your-face nonsense on stilts that IDists should want their opponents to utter as often as possible.
Comment by Deuce — June 23, 2006 @ 3:55 pm
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:01 pm
I'd have to read the whole essay before I could say for sure, but I think he's just arguing that consciousness is an emergent property…that it can be explained entirely in terms of nonconscious processes. (The alternative is that the source-of-consciousness is a single complete thing and can't be reduced to smaller pieces.)
It's probably too early to say for sure which theory is right. Sometimes I feel like my consciousness is a complete thing, but I'm not sure exactly what it is that it's doing.
Memories seem to be stored in the brain…certainly I can't remember things that happened before my brain developed, and memories can be erased by brain injuries.
And personality seems to be controlled by the brain…you can temporarily change someone's personality by giving them drugs, and brain injuries can cause permanent changes.
Even awareness seems questionable. My awareness gets shut down when I go to sleep, and again that can be triggered by drugs or brain injuries.
I dunno. I like the idea of my consciousness being a thing-in-itself, but my brain's doing so much of the work that I'm not sure what's left over. Anybody else have any thoughts?
Comment by chaosengineer — June 23, 2006 @ 5:01 pm
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:17 pm
I disagree that that's what he meant (even that, I think, can be seen to be incoherent, but it's not as immediately obvious). The part that makes it very clear is where he says "If nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness seems to have, then consciousness cannot exist as a thing in the physical world." It's an eliminative argument: that nothing in the physical world has the properties of consciousness, so consciousness must not really exist. He's not saying that consciousness is something (or collection of things) in the physical world, as the "emergent property" view would hold.
Comment by Deuce — June 23, 2006 @ 5:17 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 3:06 am
Why Consciousness is an Illusion"¦…
by Ken Brown Or not. What does it say about the academic establishment when the intellectual "elite" can routinely get away with spouting utter nonsense? First Richard Dawkins of Oxford, then Douglas Melton of Harvard, now Nicholas Humphrey of the…
Trackback by Signs of the Times — June 24, 2006 @ 3:06 am
June 24th, 2006 at 8:41 am
Hi Mung,
"Isn't that bok a hoot though? There isn't a single chapter that I can recall that could not be made mincemeat of."
Remember, this book is written by "sixteen of the world's leading scientists". In other words, this is the best ID critics have to offer. If any of the many critiques against intelligent design will be the deathknell of the idea, this book will have to be it.
Comment by Krauze — June 24, 2006 @ 8:41 am
June 24th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Just to balance out with some truly great mind, here are two quotes from Eugene Wigner, Nobel laureate in physics:
"It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness". (Quoted from Eugene P. Wigner. Symmetries and Reflections: Scientific Essays of Eugene P. Wigner.)
Another place Wigner stated: "There are two kinds of reality or existence; the existence of my consciousness and the reality or existence of everything else. The latter reality is not absolute but only relative." (17. Eugene P. Wigner, "Two Kinds of Reality," The Monist, Vol. 48 (1964). p. 250.)
Comment by LeifAsmarkJensen — June 24, 2006 @ 9:00 am
June 24th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
Hi Chaosengineer,
"I'd have to read the whole essay before I could say for sure, but I think he's just arguing that consciousness is an emergent property"¦that it can be explained entirely in terms of nonconscious processes."
I've read Humphrey's whole essay, and I'm pretty sure that's not his argument. In the paragraph immediately after the quoted sentence, he goes on to compare consciousness to ghosts, mirages, and visual illusions like this.
Having previously argued that consciousness has properties that make it appear to be unaccountable in terms of physical processes, Humphrey then suggests that natural selection has "set us up" to think that something non-physical exists, which is somehow conducive to survival. This is how he ends his essay:
Comment by Krauze — June 24, 2006 @ 12:45 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
Hi Leif,
I don't think you need quantum theory to argue for consciousness. As JohnnyB points out, consciousness is "probably the only universally-experienced empirical fact". IOW, the vast majority of people are probably more sure that they are conscious than they are of quantum theory.
Comment by Krauze — June 24, 2006 @ 12:52 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
Since I define consciousness in terms of my own personal experience, my consciousness cannot be an illusion (yours, on the other hand…).
Nevertheless, it is quite possible, even likely, that the properties of our conscious mind are not what they superficially seem to be, just as visual illusions reveal that some aspects of our visual experience differ from objective reality. My idea of consciousness is this:
There is a selective advantage to being able to predict the behavior of other living creatures, and especially others of one's own species. This favored the evolution of brain neural systems capable of modeling and predicting the behavior of other creatures. Once such a system evolved, it was natural to direct it at ourselves as well as others. So our consciousness is basically a kind of a simulation of our selves. The "illusion" part is our subjective impression that our conscious mind is running the show, when it is actually more the way that we explain our own behavior to ourselves. What we imagine to be our motivations are often likely to be essentially educated guesses by higher cerebral systems that have only limited access to the inner workings of the basal ganglia centers where emotions and motivations arise. I suspect that most of the time our conscious mind is like a small child who imagines himself to be "playing" a video game machine, when it is actually going through its "attract" mode, and paying no attention to the kid's enthusiastic waggling of the joystick.
Comment by trrll — June 24, 2006 @ 4:04 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Hi Krauze.
Yes, you are right. Consciousness is not only universally experienced by all of us, it is probably the only fact which is self-evident. It is actually very straightforward.
Still, in the discussion whether consciousness is fundamental or an emergent property, I find Wigners point relevant: since our knowledge of matter depends upon our conscious experience of it, it would appear that consciousness is a deeper reality and not an emergent property (or epiphenomon, to use Thomas Huxley's expression).
Comment by LeifAsmarkJensen — June 24, 2006 @ 4:11 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Hi Leif,
Although I find the possibility of consciousness being an irreducible aspect of reality fascinating, I don't think it should be confused with whether consciousness is real. I'd hate for someone to jump on your argument, as if that would mean that consciousness is an illusion.
Comment by Krauze — June 24, 2006 @ 5:04 pm
June 24th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Humphrey's attack on consciousness looks like an attack on science. The ability to appreciate the meaning of an observation, the ability to conceptualize a hypothesis, the ability to design an experiment, and the ability to appreciate the meaning of the experimental results, are all dependent on consciousness. So is Humphrey saying that science is founded on an illusion?
Comment by MikeGene — June 24, 2006 @ 11:13 pm
June 25th, 2006 at 10:37 am
And not just science. Humphrey's "solution" raises more questions than it answers and has to create more problems for science than it is worth to science. It should be rejected on pragmatic grounds alone. But then, pragmatism is an illusion as well.
Why do we even do science in a Humphrey world?
Comment by Mung — June 25, 2006 @ 10:37 am
June 25th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Actually, I found the book to be quite interesting and most of the chapters to be profoundly insightful, demonstrating the utility of Darwin's theory.
For Humphrey's essay, I wasn't overly familiar with the metaphysical philosophy underlying such concepts, but what's wrong with his considerations of Descartes and Wallace? Perhaps consciousness is merely an illusion, reducible to a massive volume of biophysical and biochemical reactions…
Krauze – why do you take such a casually dismissive tone towards metaphysical questions of reality? It's highly abstract and difficult to follow, true, but do you really want to criticize a branch of philosophy that began with Plato's allegory of The Cave?
Comment by Daniel — June 25, 2006 @ 11:34 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 6:50 am
Again, this doesn't make any sense. To affirm the existence of illusions is to affirm the existence of consciousness. An illusion, after all, is a conscious experience of the external world that doesn't accurately portray how the world is. If you want to say that consciousness doesn't exist, you must say that it isn't even an illusion. You must say that it doesn't even appear to us that we are conscious, not that it's a false appearance (a false appearance is still an appearance, hence consciousness). This, however, would be lunacy. You're much better off trying to argue that consciousness is identical to some physical stuff, not that it doesn't exist (a view that the vast majority of people will rightly write off without consideration).
Comment by Deuce — June 26, 2006 @ 6:50 am
June 26th, 2006 at 7:19 am
The fact that our conscious mind is aware of the phenomenon does not necessarily make it part of the phenomenon. There are some fairly simple neural network models of vision that make errors in perception comparable to certain visual illusions. I don't think that anybody would argue that these models are conscious in any meaningful way.
Comment by trrll — June 26, 2006 @ 7:19 am
June 26th, 2006 at 7:42 am
They make "errors" in that they don't produce results in the way we intended them to, not that they have false beliefs. That's not the same as an illusion, which involves representative content, a false subjective propositional view of the world. Illusion rests on the idea of representative mental content had by a subjective point of view (consciousness). "Consciousness is an illusion" is a sentence with no meaning. It doesn't describe a coherent possibility. "Consciousness simply doesn't exist," on the other hand, has meaning (though no sane person would take it seriously).
Comment by Deuce — June 26, 2006 @ 7:42 am
June 26th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
My point, Deuce, was that perhaps consciousness is reducible to discrete chemical and physical properties that can be deceived by intrinsic biases. We know that perceptions – the basis for consciousness – are unique to the individual and subjective, and that our perceptions are limited to a relatively narrow range of sensations (400-700nm wavelengths of light, 20-20,000Hz for hearing, etc.) and that our consciousness is thusly limited as well. Our awareness is incomplete at best, making consciousness a sensation of "reality" based upon limited perception.
So parse words between "false appearance" and "illusion" if you'd like, but either way, our "consciousness" can be fooled all too easily. What if the theoretical frameworks that our philosophies are based upon are fundamentally flawed? Wouldn't that make our perceptions of reality incorrect?
Again though, yes, these discussions are highly abstract and metaphysical, and thus yes, it doesn't usually enter into normal conversation. Nevertheless, there are highly qualified philosophers and neuroscientists who are quite sane and take such questions very seriously.
Comment by Daniel — June 26, 2006 @ 12:22 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
But I may see a visual illusion, and recognize it as an illusion, so that I do not in fact have a false belief about the world. But my lack of belief in the illusion does not change the misleading nature of what I perceive. What's more, many illusions make "sense," either in terms of the low level wiring of the visual system (e.g. the "scintillating grid") or in terms of misapplication of a visual algorithm adapted for interpretation of 3D images to a 2D image (e.g. the "railroad track" illusion. None of these have anything to do with consciousness, and if anything seem to occur "upstream" from conscious perception.
Comment by trrll — June 26, 2006 @ 12:34 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
*Sigh* You just don't seem to get the point here. A consciousness that can be fooled about external reality, or has a limited perception of it, is still a consciousness that exists. What you are giving, if anything, are reasons for doubting that those things perceived by our conscious perception have anything to do with external reality (a position that is fundamentally anti-knowledge), not a reason for doubting that our perceptions exist. To say that something we think we experience in the world is only a subjective appearance is at least coherent, but to say that our consciousness is only a subjective appearance says nothing, because it's precisely subjective appearance that we're talking about. As Descarte showed, you can doubt that anything in the external world is more than a subjective appearance, but you can't doubt subjective appearances, because to say that subjective appearances only subjetively appear to exist is to just affirm subjective appearances again.
Comment by Deuce — June 26, 2006 @ 12:51 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Yes, but illusions are nevertheless illusions of something. They contain propositional content about the world, which may believed or not believed.
Comment by Deuce — June 26, 2006 @ 12:57 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
What is the basis though, for the conclusion that an abstract notion such as consciousness exists, and this consciousness is more than a vast but finite number chemical and physical reactions that are the product of evolution? That's my point, which you don't seem to get – that consciousness is just a chemically-perceived abstraction of the mind, and that perhaps consciousness/mind might really be just metaphysical constructions that our complex brains have evolved the ability to create for ourselves.
Comment by Daniel — June 26, 2006 @ 1:03 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Well, for one thing, basises, conclusions, and notions are all conscious entities. You are again assuming consciousness in your very question.
That's a seperate question, for another time.
That whole sentence is just another bundle of contradictions. To refer to abstractions of the mind and metaphysical constructions had by ourselves is to just affirm consciousness again. If you wish to really deny consciousness, you must deny the existence of such things. You can't banish subjective experience by saying that we only have a subjective experience of subjective experience, be it an "abstraction" or a "construction" or what have you. You must either deny it outright, or try to find something in the physical world to identify it with (or conclude that it simply is what it is, and doesn't reduce to something else).
Comment by Deuce — June 26, 2006 @ 1:25 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
I disagree – I think it's the central question, in fact, especially since this thread began as a comment to Humphrey's essay on evolution and consciousness in Intelligent Thought.
Not when you view consciousness as a manifestation of chemical reactions… in that sense, consciousness is nothing more than the ability of such chemical processes to detect that they are themselves present. (Sort of like a feedback loop)
In this scenario, the brain may perceive that it exists by tracking the effects of it with its own sensory apparatus, and construct for itself terms like "mind" and "consciousness" to broadly categorize an array of perceptions, without ever being anything more than millions of neurons firing in a biological circuit.
Furthermore, this line of thinking suggests that other animals have rudimentary consciousness as well – able to perceive the results of their own behaviors to different degrees (depending on neuroanatomy) and maybe even develop simplistic explanations for perceived phenomena in their brains. The degree of consciousness might not be something exclusive to humans, only most evolved in humans.
Comment by Daniel — June 26, 2006 @ 1:42 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Nevertheless, the incorrect appearance of reality is not dependent upon belief or conscious thought. So if an illusion such as the scintillating grid arises due to neuronal crosstalk in our visual systems, and a computer simulation based on the wiring of our visual system produces the same error, doesn't it seem unreasonable to argue that "illusion" requires consciousness? One could argue that an illusion requires a perceiver, but a computer, driven by software that is limited and clearly non-conscious could certainly act incorrectly based on faulty interpretation of visual input. Would it really make sense to argue that when a human makes an error because of faulty perception, it is an "optical illusion," but if a machine makes the same error for the same reason, we must call it something else?
Comment by trrll — June 26, 2006 @ 1:51 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
But as a response to, critique and refutation of ID, how does it fare? I say it flunks, becaues it hardly even addressess itself to ID itself or ID arguments. Fanciful speculation about the information content of the universe is science v. ID? haw!
Comment by Mung — June 26, 2006 @ 2:30 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
I'm not sure it's addressed specifically to ID itself or ID arguments, aside from the vacuity of ID's arguments in 4 or 5 of the essays (these I found boring, even though accurate – I've heard them all a thousand times). The rest deal with either Darwin's original theory, the modern synthesis, transitional fossils, etc., or simply the utility of evolutionary theory in non-biological fields of study.
No, I thought IT was not a cohesive case against a theory, it's an anthology of the "Science vs ID" culture wars, by scientists and for the pro-science public. In the process, yes, I'd say it writes off pro-ID community quite a bit, so I accept your dislike of it (even if I don't understand such dislike of IT myself).
Actually that's my view of ID arguments like Privileged Planet, et al.
Comment by Daniel — June 26, 2006 @ 3:19 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Daniel:
No, there's a logical distinction between the claim that A doesn't exist, and the claim that A is identical to B. To conflate these two propositions is fuzzy thinking. It's the former that we're discussing here.
You are still talking in terms of points of view and propositional content (such as "they are themselves present"), which is totally superfluous if we're only talking about chemical processes and denying consciousness.
Look, here's the bottom line, which I've been trying to get across. It's rationally undeniable that we have subjective experiences. To say that chemical processes are what's objectively real, and that subjective experience only seems to exist, will not get you anywhere, because that seeming is precisely the reality we're talking about. It works, for instance, to say that the sun going around the earth is a mere subjective appearance, not an objective reality, but this tactic does no good when subjective appearance is precisely the reality you're trying to explain away. Repeatedly, you are confusing consciousness with a supposed external reality, then arguing that it doesn't really exist, but only appears to exist, but in doing so you implicitly grant the existence of appearances, which is exactly what's at issue in the first place. For whatever reason, you seem unable to wrap your mind around the subjective/objective distinction, even as you continually invoke it, and as a result you're just treading water.
To reiterate: If you want to say that consciousness is not real, it is a contradiction in terms to say that it only seems to us to be real, but actually isn't. To grant that it even subjectively seems to exist just leaves you with the exact same problem all over again. You must deny that it even seems to exist. If that seems nuts (and it is), you're better off trying to argue that it's identical to some material phenomenon.
Comment by Deuce — June 26, 2006 @ 4:09 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Hi, trrll:
The problem here is that you are conflating an illusion with the factors that contribute to that illusion occurring. For example, it's an illusion we have that the sun goes around the earth. This illusion is caused by the earth's rotation. However, it would be a serious mistake to say that the earth's rotation is the illusion that the sun goes around the earth.
For one thing, the illusion that the sun goes around the earth contains propositional content ("The sun goes around the earth"), which can be believed or disbelieved, but the earth's rotation does not. Secondly, the illusion that the sun goes around the earth, in order to exist, must be experienced by an entity with a subjective point of view. However, the earth's rotation does not depend on a point of view, and existed before there were any observers.
Likewise, neuronal crosstalk may result in the illusion that the grid is scintillating, but it's an error to say that it is the illusion. That something doesn't work in the way you intended it to does not imply that it has a point of view, or that the point of view is experiencing and either accepting or rejecting false propositional content. To say that the computer simulation produces the "same error" as it does in us implies that induces a false belief in the visual system's point of view, or a false proposition that is rejected! However, such talk is entirely superfluous when describing what we see the visual system do.
I suppose you could argue here that the visual system does, somehow, possess a point of view and propositional subjective experience, such that it can have illusions, but then you're no longer denying that illusions require consciousness.
Comment by Deuce — June 26, 2006 @ 5:28 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
I agree that to deny the existence of consciousness is ridiculous, but from the quote, he does not seem to be saying that consciousness does not exist at all, but rather that it does not exist as a separate "thing" with the "features that consciousness seems to have"–i.e. its existance as "something in our minds that the rules of the physical universe doesn't apply to."
So perhaps it would be clearer if he were not to say "consciousness is an illusion," but rather that some of the features that we subjectively impute to consciousness, particularly its existence as a distinct thing that the rules of the physical universe don't apply to, must be illusory.
Comment by trrll — June 26, 2006 @ 5:43 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
Huh?
I'm saying that concsiousness is a manifestation of chemical reactions, which is evolvable, but that consciousness as an abstract quality of the mind (separate from the brain) is an illusion. I think we're confusing what we mean when we use that word, and I'm sorry for contributing to that.
Nonetheless, Humphrey was talking about evolution and consciousness, was he not? And in that discussion, did he not argue that consciousness was evolvable, that non-human animals have rudiments of consciousness, and that the special God-given consciousness of humans was illusionary??? I see nothing wrong with these distinctions.
In this sense, your comment,
makes complete sense, and in agreement with the view that conscioiusness is a perceptive sense that can be fooled, and is based upon the reducibility of the neural network that is the brain.
That's because I'm not talking about the subjective/objective distinction precisely. Once again, I'm talking about the difference between the brain and the mind. Consciousness as described as an attribute of the mind independent of the brain is an illusion, I argue. Consciousness as a neural phenomenon of self-perception of the inner workings of the brain, by all accounts, appears to be real. Please, try and wrap your head around that, because I think I'm gonna explode if you say that I'm stuck on subjective/objective or external/internal distinctions one more time, while ignoring that my distinction is the mind versus the brain.
Comment by Daniel — June 26, 2006 @ 5:52 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
trrll,
Thank you! At least you "get it," even if Deuce does not.:roll:
Comment by Daniel — June 26, 2006 @ 5:53 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
trrll:
Not so sure. In the part that Krauze quoted, he seemed to say almost the exact opposite: "The reason is obvious: If nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness seems to have, then consciousness cannot exist as a thing in the physical world." It would make no sense to say that consciousness not existing as a thing in the physical world is proof that rules of the physical universe do apply to it, and I think we can both agree that he isn't trying to say that consciousness exists outside the physical world either. As you can see, he's trying to give an eliminative argument here, by saying that because we don't see the features that consciousness seems to have in the external world, therefore they aren't there. Clearly he's outright denying the existence of features of consciousness, to the point that he says that it doesn't exist in the physical world (by which he means the only world). Which features of consciousness is he denying? Presumably, as he says, all features that we can't empirically observe in the physical world, which, I would say, is all of them. But then he turns around and says that they only subjectively seem to exist. That subjective seeming is precisely what we can't see in the physical world, though.
Comment by Deuce — June 26, 2006 @ 6:31 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
But once again, he does not say that consciousness cannot exist. He says that it cannot exist as a thing with the "features that it seems to have." This is very different from saying that there is no such thing as consciousness.
I think that he is merely making the point, supported by a lot of physiological and behavioral data, that instead of being some kind of "thing," separate from the rest of physics, consciousness is something that the brain does–not a thing but a function, developed over the course of evolution, and that what is "illusory" about it is some of the features that it subjectively seems to have.
Comment by trrll — June 26, 2006 @ 7:14 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
That depends. If I say that something may exist, but I deny everything about it, or the major features it is supposed to have, then of course I'm really denying it after all. If none of the features that consciousness seems to have are real, then it doesn't exist. Humphrey is saying that all features of consciousness that can't by physically observed in the external world are nonexistent. Is there anything left at all?
Can the subjective seeming be seen in the physical world, and if not, is it one of the things that are illusory? I think it's worth pointing out that the belief in consciousness never was the result of thinking we could see it in the physical world in the first place, and hence the failure to do so doesn't count against it. In fact, seeing it in the third person would in principle contradict its first-personness. It was always because we experience subjective apearances directly, and because such appearances are necessary for doing any empirical work at all, so that denying them voids all objective theories about the world (After all, the *only* justification that you have for believing any proposition about the physical world is that it appears to be the case, and the only way to know that some appearance is only an illusion is that it contradicts other appearances). In the case of others, consciousness has always been inferred, not seen directly or deduced.
Comment by Deuce — June 26, 2006 @ 8:06 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
I disagree. The fact that one might mistake the nature of something does not render it nonexistant. People once thought the sun was a god in a flaming chariot drawn by horses. This is wrong in almost every particular, and yet the sun exists. In any case, I don't define consciousness in terms of some list of features, but in terms of my own perceptions. What those perceptions mean in terms of physical reality is open to question, but I have enough experience with sensory illusions to know that my perceptions can provide a misleading impression of reality.
"Subjective seeming" presumably has its physical existence in the pattern of activity within our brains. While our current ability to measure this in a living human being is limited by ethics and technology, it is hardly beyond detection. Patterns of neural activity associated with consciousness, and even specific states of consciousness, can be detected electrically, by changes in blood flow detected by functional MRI, and by PET scanning with positron-emitting glucose analogs. What is likely illusional is the impression that our consciousness is somehow separate from our body, rather than being something that the body does, like breathing and circulation of blood. The illusion that some aspect of one's body is somehow independent of the rest is not a particularly unusual one–it occurs in some pathological circumstances, and can be contrived to occur in certain experimental situations
Comment by trrll — June 26, 2006 @ 9:27 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 9:43 pm
trrll:
What are the specific features of consciousness that "cannot exist as a thing in the physical world" Self-awareness? Sensation? Relative intelligence? Thoughts? Dreams? Ideas? Memories? Emotions? Volition? Critical facilities? Creativity?
Comment by Joy — June 26, 2006 @ 9:43 pm
June 26th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
All of the above, as a thing in itself, separate from the brain's neural hardware.
Comment by trrll — June 26, 2006 @ 11:36 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 2:15 am
Humphrey cites but doesn't name "features" of consciousness that cannot exist as things in the physical world, as his reason for denying the objective existence of consciousness itself. I asked what those features might be.
You answer is that consciousness is non-existent because self-awareness, sensation, intelligence, thoughts, dreams, ideas, memories, emotions, volition, critical facilities and creativity can't be held in your hands, even though these attributes of consciousness are known to be causal in the physical world. Do you deny the causal efficacy of consciousness too?
Comment by Joy — June 27, 2006 @ 2:15 am
June 27th, 2006 at 7:06 am
That bears no resemblance that I can detect to anything that I said.
I think that it is in question. It is clear that it is possible to experimentally construct circumstances in which the conscious mind it under a false illusion that it is causal. And it is also possible to identify circumstances in which conscious awareness of a decision occurs after other neural correlates of decision making. This certainly raises the question of whether consciousness is ever causal, or whether the conscious mind is always, as I said before, like a small child who imagines himself to be "playing" a video game machine, when it is actually going through its "attract" mode, and paying no attention to the kid's enthusiastic waggling of the joystick.
My own speculation is that the impression of conscious decision making is not always an illusion, even though it sometimes can be. Even though the actual decision may be made at a pre-conscious level, conscious thought may determine what that decision will be, or at least bias it one way or another.
Comment by trrll — June 27, 2006 @ 7:06 am
June 27th, 2006 at 8:25 am
trrl:
You're going in circles. Humphrey said, quite explicitly, that those features *don't* exist in the physical world, not that they do, as you seem to have just said. He clearly didn't mean that they exist outside the physical world either, else he wouldn't have called them an illusion.
Do they exist in the physical world? Do they exist outside the physical world? If your answer to both questions is "no", then you are denying their existence altogether. Saying that they aren't "separate from the brain's neural hardware" doesn't answer the question. Temperature is not seperate from mean molecular kinetic energy (they're the same thing), but I don't need to add that clause in order to answer the simple question of whether or not temperature is something that exists (it does, btw).
Comment by Deuce — June 27, 2006 @ 8:25 am
June 27th, 2006 at 9:23 am
My reading is that he is not saying that they do not exist at all, but that they do not exist "as a thing in the physical world," but rather as processes. In other words, they exist in the same sense that breathing exists, or the circulation of blood.
Comment by trrll — June 27, 2006 @ 9:23 am
June 27th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Processes (or events) are things too, I would say. They may not be objects, but they are things. However, granting unusual use of those words, it still doesn't get Humphrey off the hook. Nobody in their right mind would say that breathing or the circulation of blood must be illusions, or that nothing in the physical world can have the properties that they seem to have.
Rather than trying to rationalize Humphrey's words, and jumping through logical hoops to get them to make sense, I think you're better off just accepting what's pretty obvious: he said something remarkably silly, anti-factual, and contradictory on its face, and there's no way of explaining away the absurdity without incredible strain. Saying that consciousness doesn't exist is lunacy, and saying that it's an illusion is both lunacy and contradictory to boot. Just because Humphrey is a materialist attacking ID doesn't mean than anything he says must be sensible, or needs to be defended by every other materialist. Trying to rationalize a blatant absurdity just reflects badly on the rationalizer as well.
Comment by Deuce — June 27, 2006 @ 10:01 am
June 27th, 2006 at 10:11 am
trrll:
I asked what "features" of consciousness cannot exist in the physical world, supporting Humphrey's belief that consciousness does not objectively exist. I named some features of consciousness that came readily to mind, hoping you would address actual features of consciousness rather than beliefs about them (decisions/conclusions).
Point: It doesn't matter to the existence or causal efficacy of consciousness if decisions to act aren't entirely free and unconditioned by history and habit. Nor do beliefs about the nature of consciousness render the consciousness that holds beliefs non-existent.
If you do accept the existence and causal efficacy of consciousness, why are you defending Humphrey's ridiculous illogic?
Comment by Joy — June 27, 2006 @ 10:11 am
June 27th, 2006 at 10:50 am
I do not consider such processes to be "things in the physical world," although they may be functions of things in the physical world.
And nobody did, so this seems a rather extreme non-sequitur.
Comment by trrll — June 27, 2006 @ 10:50 am
June 27th, 2006 at 10:59 am
And the answer was: all of the features that you listed, as a physical thing in itself, apart from the brain's neural hardware. In other words, there is such a thing as consciousness, but it is not a separate "thing in the physical world."
I suppose not, although I'm not sure why you are bringing this up; it doesn't seem to have any relationship to anything I said.
I do accept the existence of consciousness, but not "as a thing in the physical world," because I consider functions/processes to be distinct from physical things, so I see no particular conflict between my views and Humphrey's words. I believe that the causal efficacy of consciousness is debatable, and probably less than perceived.
Comment by trrll — June 27, 2006 @ 10:59 am
June 27th, 2006 at 11:11 am
trrll, good heavens! You tried to defend Humphrey by saying that he only meant that consciousness was a physical process like breathing or blood circulation. But then I pointed out that if this were the case, his words would be like saying that breathing and blood circulation are illusions, and that nothing in the physical world can have the properties of breathing or blood circulation, so suggesting that that's what he meant doesn't make his words any less absurd. Then you come back and inform me that nobody called breathing and blood circulation illusions?! Of course, I never said anyone did. Are we even having the same conversation here? Sorry, at this point it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that you're being deliberately dense to avoid giving straight answers and admitting that what Humphrey said was nonsense on stilts.
Comment by Deuce — June 27, 2006 @ 11:11 am
June 27th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Princeton's WorldNet dictionary, with usage:
thing, noun
1. a special situation; "this thing has got to end"; "it's a remarkable thing" 2. an action; "how could you do such a thing?" 3. an artifact; "how does this thing work?" 4. an event; "a funny thing happened on the way to the…" 5. a statement regarded as an object; "to say the same thing in other terms"; "how can you say such a thing?" 6. any attribute or quality considered as having its own existence; "the thing I like about her is…" 7. a special abstraction; "a thing of the spirit"; "things of the heart" 8. a vaguely specified concern; "things are going well" 9. an entity that is not named specifically; "I couldn't tell what the thing was" 10. a special objective; "the thing is to stay in bounds" 11. a persistent illogical feeling of desire or aversion; "he has a thing about seafood" 12. a separate and self-contained entity.
Please note the intangible, consciousness-specific items on this list of definitions for the word "thing." It's not until we get all the way to definition #12 that we get anything approaching a materialistic specification. Yet no one has claimed that any feature of consciousness must exist as separate and self-contained entities in order to considered 'real'. Except for you and Humphrey and Daniel, that is.
Debate is a product of conscious thought and cognitive analysis of ideas, which are themselves products of conscious thought. If you believe that conscious thought is an illusion there's nothing to debate. Why would anyone who can think care what you think about the non-existence of thought, except as a semi-humorous display of dissociation?
This line of argument is way beyond absurd so I'm not wasting any more of my consciousness on it!
Comment by Joy — June 27, 2006 @ 12:16 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Wow – a lot of thoughts going on since I checked in here late yesterday, so I won't attempt to catch up. But it seems to me that Deuce still thinks that my line of thinking, continued by trrll, is going in circles, which is just plain wrong. The distinctions being made are subtle, but significant – Humphrey, and us, describe a difference between the non-evolvable, specially created by God, aspect of Humans that was thought to be unique to humans for centuries by the great philosophical minds of history; and the evolvable consciousness that is not unique to humans, and is reducible to neural chemistry of the brain. Obviously the first is illusionary, but the second is not.
How on Earth is that circular thinking Deuce?
Comment by Daniel — June 27, 2006 @ 12:16 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
Daniel, I think Deuce's point is that saying "consiousness is reducible to neural chemistry of the brain and therefore an illusion" involves utilitizing an irreducible aspect of conciousness to come to that conclusion.
Comment by Guts — June 27, 2006 @ 12:37 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Ah, then I missed where he said that…
That's a fair objection, and at least it understands the point I'm trying to make. Yet let's look at that objection – is the brain/mind reducible to neural chemistry?
Certainly it's complex, with a great number of associated phenomena that are as yet unexplained. And, as Humphrey notes in his essay, the brain/mind is the greatest black box in biology. Obviously you can figure out my position – that it's just neural wiring – but as science hasn't progressed that far, maybe that's excessive speculation.
Comment by Daniel — June 27, 2006 @ 12:51 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Yes, the word "thing" used by itself can have a lot of meanings. Which is probably why Humphrey qualified it very specifically as "thing in the physical world" to indicate that he is specifically referring to something that has a separate physical existence.
I suppose that might have some sort of relevance if I actually held that belief. But since, as I have said repeatedly, I do not (and seriously doubt whether Humphrey does either), your little exercise in circular reasoning is quite beside the point.
Comment by trrll — June 27, 2006 @ 12:55 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
That's an interesting thought. Consciousness is that reality of existence that allows you to be aware of that thought. Without awareness of thoughts, sensations and emotions, they might as well not exist.
Comment by MatthewCromer — June 27, 2006 @ 12:59 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Well, at least that makes your apparent non-sequitur more comprehensible. You have fallen into a basic logical error, hearing "some A is B" and concluding "all B is A." Specifically, saying that consciousness gives the illusory impression of being a physical thing when it is actually a function or process is not equivalent to asserting that all processes/functions give such a misleading impression.
Comment by trrll — June 27, 2006 @ 1:01 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
No, it was Wallace's position that consciousness is irreducible, Humphrey is just describing it, and responding (page 58 of Intelligent Thought):
Now, I would argue with Humphreys that the evolution of consciousness is not at all "against the odds" (in fact it's quite plausible), and that the steps to demonstrating this is not radical, but readily available by way of the fields of comparative anatomy and evo-devo.
In any case, Humphrey is not arguing for the irreducibility of consciousness.
Comment by Daniel — June 27, 2006 @ 1:18 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
Daniel:
How so?
Comment by Guts — June 27, 2006 @ 1:22 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Guts – well, from comparative anatomy and behavioral biology we already know that many of the aspects of consciousness (emotion, recognition of self, etc.) are not exclusive to humans. As we don't have a complete explanation on what consciousness is, however, transitional forms are difficult to identify merely from brain anatomy. But I suspect (and yes this is speculation) that explanations of the acquisition of consciousness in higher vertebrates will be refined quite a bit in the coming decade or two, as relatively new fields of biology mature (I'm specifically rather influenced in these thoughts by the books Plausibility of Life and Endless Forms Most Beautiful.
More and more our understanding of neurology is reaching the molecular scale, where we can identify (and then study in primates and other vertebrates) the molecular features that enable awareness. What's stopping us now is that these features are as yet unclear.
Comment by Daniel — June 27, 2006 @ 1:40 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
[sheesh!] Are beliefs about illusions something science is capable of quantifying?
Actually, proposed physical mechanisms are quite well understood within the inherent limitations of the quantum-to-classical phase transition. It's all been reduced as far as it can be reduced, and indeterminacy remains at the very heart of the structural system and its dynamic functioning – the process y'all keep telling us can't be a thing in the physical world, so must not objectively exist.
No one is stopping you from using your mind to speculate that you have no minds to use. No one is stopping researchers from researching the supposedly non-existent phenomena of mind either. In fact, the multidisciplinary quest to quantify consciousness is one of the best-funded and big-name-rich research programs in the entire history of humanity.
If it's all just whistling illusionary Dixie about a non-existent non-phenomenon, we should go ahead and shut the whole thing down right now. You've already got your illusory beliefs in place well enough to try and change independently existing others' illusory beliefs. I'm sure the money could be put to much better use funding a universe-wide search for primordial monopoles that should exist but don't, imagining dark energy applications no one alive now will ever see, and trying to find God [Wiggly Higgly] in golden quark-gluon plasmas.
Or, if we get sick enough of funding the illusions of self-appointed mind-tyrants, maybe we could just keep our hard earned money and buy ourselves some new 'things' instead.
Comment by Joy — June 27, 2006 @ 2:51 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Joy, was that rant directed at me? I don't know about the majority of it, or how it relates to the discussion, but the beginning part strikes me as funny:
Um, no, the inner workings of the brains neural circuitry is not well understood at all. We have no proven molecular mechanism of how memory works, how neuronal connections are modulated in early learning stages of life versus the more hardwired adult stages of life, or how this neural network achieves self-awareness.
But yes, the case for the high plausibility of natural evolution of conscious awareness and thought has been made elsewhere.
Comment by Daniel — June 27, 2006 @ 3:02 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
How so?
Comment by Guts — June 27, 2006 @ 3:19 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
A series of examples: Evolution and the cognitive neuroscience of awareness, consciousness and language,
The Social Evolution of Consciousness,
Evolution of Consciousness: The Origins of the Way We Think,
Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience,
Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Empirical and Conceptual Questions,
The Liabilities of mobility: A selective pressures for the transition to consciousness in animal evolution,
The evolution of cognition"”a hypothesis, and
Evolution of Consciousness.
Sorry for the length of the list – I admit I'm not well read on them, and am not sure which ones are most useful for discussion purposes – but that was just some pickings of a couple quick google searches.
Comment by Daniel — June 27, 2006 @ 3:49 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
whoa not sure if i'll even have time to look into it. sorry. But thanks for the concise set of links. (by the way your blog seems to be down)
Comment by Guts — June 27, 2006 @ 4:00 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Yeah, I guess I overdid it there – sorry 'bout that. If I'd have to pick one, just from glancing at them, for further discussion, I'd suggest the third to last (Liabilities of Mobility). Its abstract:
In other words, consciousness may have arisen as a complex decision-making function in helping motile animals decide were to go for materials needed to evade predation, feed, find shelter, and reproduce. This paper doesn't deal much with the comparative anatomy of the brain, but more comparative behavioral biology, but both are important for formulating a phylogeny of consciousness.
Comment by Daniel — June 27, 2006 @ 4:11 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
I didn't say that. I said that if consciousness is a physical process like breathing, then calling it an illusion is like calling breathing an illusion. Nowhere did I say that this would imply that all physical processes were also illusions.
Humphrey *did not* say that consciousness exists, but that it was an illusion that it was a thing rather than a physical process. If he had wanted to say that, he could have easily done so. He said that it itself was an illusion. Look, I don't know if you're unable or unwilling to read plain English, both mine and Humphrey's, but it's frustrating and pointless trying to argue with someone who simply won't, and who keeps torpedoing all attempts at discourse before we can even get to square one. I'm honestly not trying to insult you here, but it's gotten to the point where I realize there's just no hope of this conversation going anywhere, so just forget it.
Comment by Deuce — June 27, 2006 @ 4:27 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
The problem I've seen with all the materialist accounts of consciousness is this. The actual conceptual problems of interest are, how does the "what-it's-like" quality of 1st-person subjective experience, with its point of view, work, and how does it relate to the 3rd-person view of the physical world, where we can't observe points of view?
In the cases I've seen, one of a couple tracks is taken. The person may just take consciousness for what it is, without trying to reduce it to something else, and then go on to explain why such a thing might be useful and preserved by natural selection. Of course, nobody ever really doubted that consciousness was useful, or would be preserved by natural selection. That's really an answer to a completely different question.
The other case is that the person, seeing that subjective experiences and points of view can't be observed in a 3rd-person view of physical reality, decides to ignore them, and offers an explanation for those properties that can be observed in a 3rd-person view, often referring to them as "consciousness". These may be interesting, and very technical, but again they're answering a different question. Sometimes, the person will say that there is nothing (such as appearances, points of view, beliefs with a true/false value, etc) other than what can be seen from the 3rd-person view, but that these things only appear to me to exist. However, this just offers even more evidence for appearances and points of view (witness the roundabouts in this thread)!
Sometimes, I wonder if the confusion isn't caused by materialists actually not being conscious. Joy, I'm sure you've had the same feeling on occasion, am I right?
Comment by Deuce — June 27, 2006 @ 5:25 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Daniel:
Who said anything about consciousness not being 'natural' or not being a teleologically self-organized development in the course of organic evolution? Oh, yeah. You'd probably have to be of the opinion that consciousness objectively exists and is causally efficient in the 'real' world before you could accept that it's natural and serves specifically useful functions for living organisms.
So far the effort does not have all the data organized into an ideologically policed "Orthodoxy" like neodarwinism. But yet another faux religion of scientism is NOT the goal. It's a multidisciplinary effort that's heavy on the process physics and non-linear systems ends due to the specific teleological goals of those providing much of the funding. And in this spirit, the participants are generally more open about the actual limitations of scientific practice and less tolerant of the notable ego-excesses and wasted time of ideological turf wars.
They're aiming for something useful per science's actual FAPP job description, not something deliberately disruptive on a sociopolitical level. There have been some pissing contests (not as bad as the current one at PT though), but they don't last too long. These predictably come from biologists of the reductionist/materialist mindset feeling left out when they don't get funded just to gripe and pull everyone's efforts down to pre-school level. There are too many really interesting models and incoming work product about the mechanisms and details to waste precious time arguing endlessly over whether the phenomenon under investigation is 'real'.
Just a note about molecular mechanisms of memory – you may wish to check some of the incoming research on state-switching proteins, particularly those enigmatic prions that are so outrageously indestructible. There is some pretty good evidence that they are instrumental to hardwiring memory, which probably helps explain why memory's the first thing to go when they start accumulating in beta-sheets.
Comment by Joy — June 27, 2006 @ 5:38 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
I'd say rather that imagining breathing to be a separate "thing in the physical world" rather than something that the body does would be an illusion. But of course, breathing does not present such an illusion–we normally experience breathing for what it is–something that the body does–whereas consciousness is perceived as having an independent physical existence apart from our body. And it is this latter perception, which does not exist for breathing or blood flow–the "experience of there being something in our minds that the rules of the physical universe doesn't apply to" that I believe that Humphrey considers to be illusory.
Comment by trrll — June 27, 2006 @ 5:44 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Daniel – Thanks for the Liabilities of Mobility link and abstract. I particularly like the descriptive phrasology -
I could not have worded that speculation more teleologically if I'd tried!
Deuce -
Oh, you betcha! In fact, I've lately taken to thinking of them as stuffed animals. Cute and cuddly (semi-interesting) for about two pulls on the platitude ring-string, then quickly becoming dust-catchers and critter havens best used as landfill.
Comment by Joy — June 27, 2006 @ 5:55 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
Silly me, to imagine that the loss of memory had something to do with all of those dead and dying neurons. As for "state-switching proteins," it's kind of hard to find proteins that aren't state switching in one way or another.
Comment by trrll — June 27, 2006 @ 5:56 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
I talk about a lot of these issues here and here.
Comment by MatthewCromer — June 27, 2006 @ 6:07 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Don't worry, trrll. I didn't expect you to go seeking the information that's available on recent research findings, particularly in a research-intensive area riding on so recent a Nobel and so threatening a developing epidemic. I offered it for Daniel, who expressed interest in the subject.
Comment by Joy — June 27, 2006 @ 6:11 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
How is that teleological? Where is it suggested that consciousness was itself consciously chosen? – clearly that passage is using "arose" and was "naturally selected for" interchangably.
Whaaa? Is it telic, or is it self-organized? Is it natural, or telic? Contradictions abound…
Again, WTF? Please clarify what you mean by consciousness when you say it objectively exists; and of course I accept that consciousness, in the sense of self-awareness and thinking capacity, exists and serves useful functions.
Overall, you're ranting and rambling. Please take your time to type out your thoughts a bit more coherently next time, because deciphering what you're saying is rather difficult. Thanks.
Comment by Daniel — June 27, 2006 @ 6:41 pm
June 27th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
You know, I find myself getting irritated every time you guys pull this sleight-of-mind to try and convince us that origin is the same thing as selection.
I'd say the contradictions are "only in your own mind," but the discussion thus far makes such a pointed quip pointless. I view consciousness as natural, self-organized and telic. Life is a telic phenomenon, as are its dynamic processes – including conscious and unconscious processes. Of course, you may not believe life objectively exists as a 'thing' in reality either. I'm not trying to change your min… er, views here, I'm just posting some information you may take or leave as you choo… er, are predisposed by your circuitry to do.
If you accept that consciousness exists and serves useful functions, then you need not ask if it objectively exists. I deal with it directly and indirectly every day. I don't know if you do or not.
The multidisciplinary research program devoted to defining and quantifying consciousness, its attributes and its physical correlates in living organisms.
No, cog-sci is where some of the most petulant nay-sayers come from – though there are plenty from physics, philosophy and evolutionary biology. I've no patience for such rot from people with hefty cruelty streaks who claim they're not even conscious in the first place. [I exempt the cog-sci crew I have worked with most directly on the synesthesia investigations].
The specific goals belong to the primary financiers – the AI guys.
The many researchers worldwide who are participating, in a broad range of disciplines.
Hmmm… Well, there's always David Chalmers versus a whole bunch of Zombies if you want a good head-wringing. He takes on Andrew Bailey, Peter Bolulich, Daniel Dennett, Cristof Koch and Francis Crick and others. Then there's Stu Hameroff and Roger Penrose's hilarious route of Grush and the Churchlands in such classics as What 'Gaps'? and More Neural Than Thou, or you can get a giggle out of Stu's 'debate' with Al Scott in Tucson with A Sonoran Afternoon. You'll find some great wang-wagging in some of the offered back-and-forth from the Journal of Consciousness Studies too if you get bored. Including Penrose's defenses of his Orch-OR theory as outlined in his 'Mind' trilogy.
PZ Myers over at Panda's thumb over the last 2 days. It's a real hoot, though the Mom in me just wants to spank the lot of 'em as the rotten brats they truly are. Good thing I don't go there much…
No, scientists propose models and mechanisms only for those phenomena that ARE 'real'. Nobody will pay them to play fantasy games, you know. That's what philosophers are for.
My thoughts are fine, thanks. You simply didn't read my previous posts for information content (or don't do well with reading comprehension). You need not even read this post for information content, no skin off my teeth. §;o)
Comment by Joy — June 27, 2006 @ 9:03 pm
June 28th, 2006 at 9:55 am
Remind me of which essay dealt with Irreducible Complexity.
Identify the main arguments of ID and tell me which essay dealt with each of those arguments.
Actually, forget that. This isn't the thread for it. I'd rather stick to the Humphrey essay.
Comment by Mung — June 28, 2006 @ 9:55 am
June 28th, 2006 at 10:48 am
Humphrey does this as well.
Plans and ideas? Doesn't that open up to argument by analogy to living things? After all, we know that plans and ideas subjected to selection, can and do result in the equivalent of good design. But where is the evidence that non-plans and non-ideas can result in the equivalent of good design when subjected to selection?
In every other realm where variant plans or ideas compete for survival, selection has the power to create the equivalent of good design. Therefore, it is reasonable to infer that the designs we see in the biological realm are likewise a reflection of the power of selection to create the equivalent of good design based upon variant plans or ideas competing for survival.
Comment by Mung — June 28, 2006 @ 10:48 am
June 28th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Humphrey's entire argument is suspect from the beginning, as I hope to share later. He begins with the proposition that if we came across something that is impossible to create we would have to conclude that it had been created supernaturally. How bizarre is that?
Another bizarre quote:
Comment by Mung — June 28, 2006 @ 11:02 am
June 28th, 2006 at 11:21 am
Notice the misdirection in the first sentence, with the words "the blind process of natural selection." Selection, as we all know, is constantly asserted to be the not-blind component of the RM-NS paradigm (so as to get past challenges to the "random" qualifier on the origins end. This is quite interesting.
When criticisms of neodarwinian "Orthodoxy" reached a significant decibel level with the rise of ID and the scientific deployment of some really nifty new technologies to examine the mutational end of the equation, the other side of the equation was loudly touted as deterministic. MTurner [EAM] has for as long as I've followed his ideas spoken out forcefully against the idea that the transitory whims of ecological/personal "luck" could ever be considered deterministic for the purpose of shaping complex traits (genes and expression suites) in entire populations over generational time scales. Thus making the neodarwinian tenet Random-Random, which is unconvincing as a designer of well-adapted biodiversity.
Also notice how these guys aren't appealing to the RM half of the equation anymore either, but deliberately conflating origin with selection. It's like they got together and decided they can't defend neodarwinism anymore (I've seen some distancing on that), but wish to stick with Darwin's selection model exclusively – going back to selection as the random component because the materialist ideology requires evolution to BE random.
Charlie's ideas on origin were positively Lamarckian. Can we expect a return to non-random variation now? Seems to me that would be a pretty big victory for the telic crowd, n'est ce pas?
Comment by Joy — June 28, 2006 @ 11:21 am
June 28th, 2006 at 11:44 am
Joy –
What sleight of hand?
Please elaborate how "life is a telic phenomenon" – that seems like a subjective conclusion, based upon the lack of evidence for intentional, forward-planning required for a telic process. Not to mention, there's no causal agent to facilitate such telic processes.
Yes, of course, unless you're arguing that consciousness and the mind exist as separate from the brain (as the soul supposedly does). It's that separateness that I'm arguing about.
Regarding your cog-sci comments, you certainly seem cynical and very negative – I'm sure you can disagree with some aspects of cog-sci, but I'm not sure that degree of hatefulness is warranted. Not to mention, if you have no patience for alternative viewpoints, how can you expect others to pay attention to yours?
Thank you for the Chalmers, Penrose, and other links – they look like very interesting reading. I'll check them out.
How very nice of you to go around insulting me. How do you expect to have intelligent conversations with people when you treat them this way? I'd think the Mom in you would know better.
Comment by Daniel — June 28, 2006 @ 11:44 am
June 28th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Daniel:
Erm… I didn't say hand, I said 'sleight-of-mind'. That's when the magic act is designed to fool the mind rather than the eyes. The in-house term for this form of prestidigitation is "distraction." The neodarwinian synthesis is RM-NS – that's Random Mutation and Natural Selection – two (count 'em) uber-mechanisms, not one. Any post-ND paradigm is still going to need both, no matter where (or if) a "random" qualifier is gratuitously attached. Mutation [origin] – Selection [population dynamics].
So unless you're saying the random comings and goings of selective conditions in the environment somehow enters into germline cells in existing populations to specifically cause alterations in genes/genomes/expression patterning/RNA/proteins (it's an interactive system) to cause adaptive mutations to suit itself, you still must explain origin. Origin is not selection.
Thus "arose" and "were naturally selected for" are not interchangeable concepts in the subject of evolution.
Life itself is the causal agent for its existence as well as facilitator for telic processes – reproduction is an in-built drive for all life forms, and this allows for progressive evolution of ever more complex, ever more conscious, ever more teleologically-oriented organisms. Life does not spontaneously generate. You may assume that it does, but no one has ever once seen any organism of any variety spontaneously generate from any conditions anywhere on earth at any time. The assumption isn't very 'scientific' or even very 'rational' in the face of the evidence.
Life comes from life – Louis Pasteur established this scientifically at around the same time Charlie Darwin was putting the final touches on his theory of evolution by natural selection from among variants arising in a quite Lamarckian manner from acquired traits (he knew nothing of reliable particulate inheritance or sophisticated read-write codes. He ignored Mendel on purpose).
Your life may not be particularly telic. Perhaps you have no goals in mind for yourself or your time in time, perhaps you will never reproduce and contribute to the chain of being. But the vast majority of others do and will do. Our systems and processes are telic as well, thanks to telic evolution. Our hearts pump blood, our lungs oxygenate it, our digestive systems acquire matter for use and for replacement parts, our traits are encoded with read-write sophistication, our minds lead us to wonder about everything and anything at all. We create and compile cumulative knowledge in both our libraries and our bodies.
And we can cast our minds all the way across time and space to the first moments of the Big Bang at the speed of thought. So much for the "laws of physics" as they don't apply to consciousness! It seems to me that to deny the reality of consciousness because it can be cast beyond space and time (as Humphrey did and as you've defended) is ridiculous. But I'm a realist, not a positivist.
Rocks do not evolve into the Pieta by means of mutation-selection. They do not reproduce, they have no telic systems, they cannot think or plan or act. It takes a human being to create the Pieta out of rock. That's a telic act as well, by the way.
If there are physical/neural correlates (mechanisms) of consciousness – and both you and I believe there are – then the consciousness expressed by these physical constructs cannot exist apart from them as it is expressed through them. This does NOT mean that the evolutionary development of physical constructs that enable the expression of concentrated consciousness in any organism didn't draw upon a fundamental aspect of reality itself for the development. Every physical construct draws upon the fundamentals – the nature of space and time – to guide construction of aggregated matter inside space and time. We call those the "laws of physics," or the template of the possible. It enables both freedom and constraint, disallowing anything that CANNOT exist in space and time.
In my favorite models of spacetime and consciousness, there's a "Big Wow" fundamental in the lattice that expresses in certain vital aggregates of matter (life) AS consciousness. Sort of like life were a preconceived conclusion of manifestation itself, a localization of the fundamental parameter that seeks (in a remarkably telic fashion) to experience itself. The time it takes is just the time it takes. I have never had a problem with evolution. I've just got a problem with the positivist ideologies that come (purposely) attached at the hip. I see no good reason for it, and don't buy the fairy tales it generates.
If some fundamental form of consciousness is embedded in the framework, it cannot be born and it cannot die. That says nothing about anybody's personal ego, and nothing about gated country clubs in the sky. I do not project my ideology into the laws of the universe, but I don't ignore possibilities just because they conflict with my ideology either. That's how science was intelligently designed to work. Inevitably though, it gets rusty from the corruptive influence of ego – human nature never changes. I'm all for the liberal application of naval jelly every generation or so, just to keep things honest.
Just returning the favor. Example is the best teacher, I've learned. §;o)
Comment by Joy — June 28, 2006 @ 2:16 pm
June 28th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
Yes, but the mutation would never have arisen had its resulting function not been selected for, due to the survival and reproductive fitness it conferred.
Um, I don't think you understand what "teleology" is. A telic process is one that has a purposeful development towards a goal, as by a pre-ordained decision. Life itself does not have a goal – life did not start 3.8bya just for the purpose of creating humans, nor did the Big Bang occur because of the goal set by some higher power to produce life – at least not as far as we can tell.
Yes, that's quite correct, but this is not teleology. Life, coming from life, is a blind, non-telic process.
If I insulted you, please let me know what it was that I said that was offensive – I'd like to apologize for whatever it was – but as far as I can tell, I was just merely trying to have a civil conversation and actually try to understand your point.
Comment by Daniel — June 28, 2006 @ 3:05 pm
June 28th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Humphrey:
This statement forced me to go and re-check his scientific title. Bingo! He's a Psychologist. I don't believe any sane biologist including Dawkins would say that "there really are not many such puzzles left". If there are not many puzzles left then we'd love to see the artificial life produced in lab and the process of cell differentiation demystifed, along many other biological puzzles.
Comment by Farshad — June 28, 2006 @ 3:44 pm
June 28th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Daniel:
??? Are you telling me that you believe origins are in fact telic? Somehow, I am reluctant to buy that you really mean mutations occur because their resulting functions convey survival advantage and reproductive fitness. Because if that IS what you meant, you're promoting ID. So I'll go ahead and presume you've phrased yourself badly.
You probably meant the variant trait (whatever its in-house originating mechanism[s]) came to be fixed in the population by means of selection. I don't know anyone who believes otherwise about the interrelationship between organisms and their environment (ecology) – selection is entirely uncontroversial. But once again, selection is not origin.
Traits that arise in an organism may or may not be directly related to specific stressors in the environment, and in sexually reproducing life forms only changes in the germline cells (well insulated from environmental exposure) count for evolutionary purposes. Traits become fixed or are selected out after the fact of their 'arising' (origination). Selection is not origin. If you repeat it to yourself over and over, it may sink in.
You mean as far as YOU can tell. Not being an evolutionary biologist by trade, I have never been forced to swear fealty to the deception called "Neodarwinian Orthodoxy," nor do I have any fear of what the priesthood of that 'orthodoxy' will do to me if I thumb my nose at their pious horsehockey as well as their nasty crusades.
In the field[s] of my actual knowledge and interest 'reality' is not nearly so carved into stone. I suppose this may be the reason you'll find more evangelicals hovering over biology than physics, where the arbitrary limitations of human knowledge are most readily apparent. Not that physics hasn't had its share of pompous windbags and nasty turf-warriors (Isaac Newton was nearly as much an archetype as Wolfgang Pauli or Harlow Shapely), but they do die off eventually and things get straightened out.
An evolutionary situation apparently not true of biology, which still has Charlie's mouldy corpse in a glass coffin in the Holy of Holies, guarded by axe-wielding dwarves that look a lot like PZ Myers. It would be funny in a Snow White sort of way if it weren't so danged frustrating.
In physics the fundamentals of space, time, energy and matter are mere suburbs of a multidimensional megopolis. IOW, it is entirely possible that consciousness (actually a sort of 'panprotopsychism' as part of the lattice) creates its own milieu, for its own telic purposes, outside of time (as we know it) altogether. No one has ever ruled it out by means of theory or methodology, and that situation isn't likely to change. So it matters not a whit to 'reality' what biologists (and anti-biologists) or anybody else believes to be Absolute Truth. It has always been thus.
Might be blind for you but it sure as heck hasn't been blind for me! Not only did I make very specific choices for the purpose of selective breeding, my contribution to the next generation was in place at my birth. All nicely tucked away where UV and various nasty mutagens couldn't get to it. That good ol' [fictional] Weissman barrier and all…
Beliefs are not the same thing as knowledge, just as origin is not the same thing as selection. It sure wouldn't hurt some wannabe mind-tyrants of the evangelical and/or scientific variety to learn to live with that aspect of reality.
Comment by Joy — June 28, 2006 @ 5:01 pm
June 28th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
No, you read me correctly, but you're misusing the term "telic."
Yet, selection is required for a trait to arise and become a common feature of a species' gene pool. As you say:
These "traits that arise" do so because of both mutation and selection, not mutation alone. So when you say:
Ah, so the problem is really just a matter of semantics and how we're using the word "arising." Ok, I disagree, but it doesn't really matter, now does it? Actually, it does – the Liabilities of Mobility paper that this started over uses the term "arose" to describe not the mutational origin of the genetic sequences that confer consciousness, but the selection and fixation of extremely simple forms of consciousness in early animals.
What exactly do you mean by the "Neodarwinian Orthodoxy" anyway?
LOL Now that's a strawman if I ever saw one, but you can just keep believing that if you want.
Comment by Daniel — June 28, 2006 @ 5:26 pm
June 28th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
So, can you give an example, even hypothetically, of a trait that doesn't exist yet being selected for the function it would result in? Or do you mean something else? I think most people, when hearing "arise" in the context of traits, take that to mean "come to exist".
Comment by Deuce — June 28, 2006 @ 5:43 pm
June 28th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Nevermind, I see that by "arise", you mean an existing trait being fixed in a population.
Comment by Deuce — June 28, 2006 @ 5:46 pm
June 28th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
No, that's a good point, and the root of the confusion here, I think.
I'm not so sure, because biologists generally wouldn't use the term "arise" to describe the freak occurence of a defect or other mutation, they'd use it to describe that trait becoming commonplace for a species.
Yeah, I like the way that sounds – "occurence" of a trait, versus "arisal" of a trait.
Comment by Daniel — June 28, 2006 @ 6:10 pm
June 28th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
I think both are sloppy and imprecise, for the purposes of what we're trying to describe, which leads to fuzzy and imprecise thinking. Really, that use of the terms seems to me almost custom-made to cause equivocal thinking! We've already already got words that more accurately portray fixing or spreading, namely "fixing" and "spreading", and if clarity of thought is what we're after, I think we should use them instead.
Comment by Deuce — June 28, 2006 @ 7:24 pm
June 28th, 2006 at 9:40 pm
Daniel, I think Deuce is right, but I get the feeling you don't understand why. Precision in our descriptors of specific concepts related to evolution is necessary in discussions with people who are skeptical of neodarwinism's platitudes and just-so storytelling. Because these are the specific concepts at issue.
All traits that exist in the biological world "arise" in individual organisms, not in populations. And individual organisms do not evolve. They exist, until they don't exist anymore. Whatever accidents of meiosis an organism is born with remain with him/her/it until they die. Whatever accidents of life on planet earth add to the anomalies are just cell damage – which can be relatively minor – in any good-sized multicellular organism. These do not factor in evolution at all in the current evolutionary model, and outside certain unusual circumstances, that is a correct view.
The only accidents that count in evolution are the ones that happen to cells with just half a genome, and the odds are very, very long that any individual gamete will ever get a chance to play the game of life. Evolutionary theory calls these accidents "mutations." They are the origin of traits. They represent fully half of the evolutionary equation, and because the neodarwinian synthesis was crafted in the 1930s when Mendel's work could no longer be ignored in the face of evidence for discrete inheritance, a superfluous qualifier was added – "random." Mostly because research was rather crude back in the day, and the best way to generate 4-winged flies and 2-headed worms was to expose the egg/embryo to mutagens (radiation or chemicals known to cause deformities).
Research over the past half century or so has complicated the odds even further. We now know about DNA proof-reading and error correction mechanisms, triggered apopsis, jumping genes, inversions, horizontal transfer, duplication-alteration 'experiments', non-DNA mechanisms of inheritance, gene expression patterning, stress-induced mutations, frame-shift constraints and many, many other wonderfully complex processes that some biologists believe render variation somewhat less than "random." In fact, there are mechanisms that reliably produce what biologists themselves call adaptive mutations. Worse, their expression triggers appear to be directly related to selective pressure from the environment.
One of the arguments used to advance a telic view of life and evolution [ID] is just this – accidents are less important to evolution than are the adaptive mutations, by whatever means acquired. It has also been demonstrated recently that the Weissman barrier – a hypothesized barrier between somatic mutations and germline mutations – can be (and is) breached both by immune system programming and by horizontally transferred DNA. Meaning that immunities/defenses and genes acquired during life can and do end up in the next generation. That's a big ol' monkey wrench in NDE [neodarwinian evolution, the theory].
So when you're discussing evolution with people who support a telic view, it's a mistake to confuse terms. Somebody's going to call you on it, for sure. Everybody knows that all who live are not equally 'fit'. A lot of life gets weeded out by the outrageous fortunes of life and death on planet earth. Not all will reach maturity. Not all who mature will mate, and all who mate will not produce the same number of offspring. Then the offspring get to take their own spin on the wheel of fortune, and so on and so forth, and here we are. Selection is not a controversial subject.
Variation and its mechanisms are a controversial subject in this debate. Accidents do happen, but they don't figure as prominently in long-term evolution as the designs do. IMO, from all I've seen (and I've been around awhile). I could of course be wrong, but I know for a fact neodarwinism is wrong. Someday soon it's going to have to change its whole framework around to accommodate evidence that belies its RM-NS pablum. It sure won't call itself ID, but it'll resemble some versions of it.
It'll never work to just conflate mutation with selection and hope nobody notices.
Comment by Joy — June 28, 2006 @ 9:40 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 10:09 am
Ok – in which way do you think the authors of The Liabilities of Mobility were using "arose" then?
Comment by Daniel — June 29, 2006 @ 10:09 am
June 29th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Daniel asked:
There are several indications in the paper itself of what the author [Merker] meant when using the word "arose," meaning primarily "evolved." Merker was writing for a specific audience – the consciousness research community – from a specific sub-discipline involved – cog-sci. And he's quite obviously enmeshed in the cog-sci point of view – "More Neural Than Thou."
In the introduction Merker states unequivocally:
Whatever genomic changes required to accomplish this progressive addition of neuronal mass and functional differentiation is not addressed at all, simply a matter of "more" from the primitive example of an earthworm. Thus I'd have to surmise that Merker is using Evo-Psych [sociobiology] just-so storytelling to describe the evolution of consciousness in terms of what looks suspiciously like intelligent design. A need is present in the development of diversified information sensors and physical means of locomotion/manipulation of the environment, so the animals co-evolve a means of meeting and controlling it.
Thus in this example "arose" means simply "evolved." The mechanisms of that evolutionary development are not discussed – purpose is.
Comment by Joy — June 29, 2006 @ 12:24 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Ok, two more questions then:
(1) Doesn't "evolved" involve both RM and NS, in the same sense as I've been using the term "arose"
(2) For the purpose point – can you distinguish between goal-oriented purpose (as in ID) and the means-oriented selection of function (as in Evo)?
…the context in which you're using "purpose" almost sounds Lamarckian.
Comment by Daniel — June 29, 2006 @ 12:46 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
I think the paper gives a rather interesting reason for consciousness , i.e. "why consciousness?". Because the senses we use to guide our movements in the world are mounted on our body (eyes, ears etc.), every movement of our body adds confounding motion information to the output of the sensory organs needed to guide those movements. What is more, it is added differently to different senses, because they are positioned differently on our body. This creates a potential control nightmare, but our perception of the world (through consciousness) gives no hint of any confusion: the world just lies there perfectly still, and does not wobble when we move our head, though its image on the retina moves and tilts with every head movement. The study suggests that the "why?" is that our brain, way back in evolution, built itself a little "situation room", like a virtual reality space, by which to simplify the control problems of getting about in the world. That "situation room" is our consciousness, and it consists of a world, a body, and inside the body an ego-center or self, all arranged for the convenience of decision-making and getting about efficiently.
Comment by Guts — June 29, 2006 @ 12:56 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Guts – Ok, then you would agree with me that by "arose" the authors were not talking merely about the mutational origins of consciousness (as Joy argued), but the fixation of such traits in early animal species as well?
Also, for my other point with Joy, do you think that "our brain, way back in evolution, built itself a little 'situation room', like a virtual reality space, by which to simplify the control problems of getting about in the world," was a engineering-like design, or a selected function?
… I'm convinced one of the main differences between ID and Evo is the differing perspectives and usages of the words "Design" and "Selection." The former implies a Designer or biological engineer or other conscious entity, whereas the latter implies perpetuation of features by environmental conditions.
Comment by Daniel — June 29, 2006 @ 1:18 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Daniel:
Yes, the mechanisms of evolution are mutation and selection. How 'random' these are is entirely dependent on the specific in-house process involved. Merker in this paper merely describes the accumulation and functional organization of structures – neurons – that have already been developed by simpler life forms.
Well, in this case it's a misnomer as well to cite the selection half of the equation for structures that have already evolved. I mean, life had figured out the selective advantages of neural structures – highly specialized cells that have no nuclear DNA but lots and lots of polymerized tubulin/actin/MAP constructs devoted entirely to information processing and coordinated response activation (biophoton release). More is better by evolution's standards obviously, or evolution would certainly never have produced anything as insanely over-endowed as human beings!
Yet this paper's point of view is design-oriented. You'll find that design-think is quite common in discussions and research dealing with consciousness and its physical structures. That shouldn't be surprising considering that so much focused consciousness from so many excellently-crafted brains is used to investigate the phenomena. This particular corner of science (lots of disciplines and sub-disciplines) isn't concerned with the interminable debates over exactly how it got here or whose gods/God created it, it's about what it 'is' and what it's for.
If you spend a little time – and I realize 'little' is an understatement – reading some of the material I linked previously, you'll notice a design orientation and lots of hypotheses about purpose. Consciousness itself is telic, so the investigations of consciousness follow a telic roadmap.
They simply must think teleologically on this subject, which is probably why the subject has been so studiously avoided as a sticky wicket in a neodarwinian 'Orthodox' paradigm. Until the AI guys got so rich they could dream about developing conscious machines, that is. To do that, they've got to have useful knowledge of what consciousness is and is constructed of. They have the wealth to buy the very best minds in all the pertinent fields, to find out if it can be found out. They are developing the structural components for applications (nanotubes, modeled on MTs) as we speak.
I am a design proponent myself, possibly because of my involvement in the quest for consciousness. I'm familiar with this higher-level debate where the ideological nit-picks of ID versus NDE aren't a scientific/methodological issue at all. Ideology does intrude on the philosophical end and can be very colorful, but it's not controlled by the Neodarwinian Defense League. But since I'm also fascinated with the ID versus NDE debate, I'd certainly avoid design-specific language in any papers describing evolutionary products rather than attributes thereof.
IOW, I'd have used selection-specific language to describe a selection-specific concept. Instead of saying the trait "arose," I'd have said it "was selected for" and leave unstated its a priori existence. It couldn't be selected for unless it already exists, and if its existence isn't an issue, I wouldn't have mentioned it at all. Precision of conceptual terminology is everything in science!
Comment by Joy — June 29, 2006 @ 1:34 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Well, thats the whole argument, I think. Is the situation room created, or did it evolve step by mutational step, or did it evolve by design (perhaps a la Joy's suggestion of directed mutations?). The study simply makes a case for the necessity of consciousness and that it can be detected in phylogeny. But doesn't really get into questions we're interested in.
Comment by Guts — June 29, 2006 @ 1:37 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
Wow, Guts! An instant replay of "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know…" in my mind went straight to Burt Reynolds in the Control Room, with Woody, et. al. lined up and waiting to make the sperm-jump… ROTF!!!
Comment by Joy — June 29, 2006 @ 2:12 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
LOL
Comment by Guts — June 29, 2006 @ 2:17 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Joy –
Again, it's design-oriented in the sense that biologists often inadvertently use design to discuss the tight correlation between structure and function of a given biological feature. Rather than use the word "selection," maybe I could make my point better if I describe it as a difference between intelligent and blind design (a la Dawkins' Blind Watchmaker). Such features can give the appearance of design indeed, because for many biological features we as humans cannot conceive of a better assemblage of parts, yet there is no apparent designer, only the appearance of selected variants of previous forms.
Yes, people are telic/conscious/etc., but where is the evidence that there was some conscious and intentional route for the tree of life to take, suggesting a purpose to its arrangement? That's an anthropomorphic concept that we, as humans, have superimposed on the tree of life – there's no designing force that's been detected which is planning out future changes in biological features, nor any evident forethought to such changes… only the ad hoc and narcissistic conclusion that we, as conscious beings, were pre-destined to be here. That's a fine theological view, but a baseless scientific claim.
What benefit does such anthropomorphization of evolution have for science?
And you use the term "NeoDarwiniam Orthodoxy" again. What on Earth is that, some dishonest claim that this biological theory is a religion?
Of course ideology intrudes into the ID/Evo debate – well, at least the ID side – but mainstream science and the peer-review process are there to weed out claims or descriptions of biology that cannot be supported by empirical evidence (e.g. pre-determination that ID suggests).
Indeed.
Guts:
Ah, that's the phrase for what Joy was describing – "directed mutation." It had been escaping me, with Lamarckism the closest I came to putting my thumb on it.
Agreed – but still, it did work nicely as a response to your question.
Comment by Daniel — June 29, 2006 @ 2:39 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
Guts:
Okay, one minor clarification. In my view, the existence of the very specialized, MT-rich, non-nucleated cells known as "neurons" is not at issue in the subject of brain development. Because the sheer number of neurons isn't a matter of mutations and selections, it's a matter of expression of the genes that encode the design plans for these neurons. Once you've got a neuron-blueprint, you can repeat it as much as you like. The limitations are entirely physical, and related entirely to whether or not "big heads" (as opposed to "big hair") can be born alive in the real world. Organization of what's there and alive is then just a matter of learning how to compartmentalize.
Interestingly enough, this very conundrum came into play rather dramatically in the hominid development of large brains/heads. So the controlling factors for expression come from the mother's half of the genome (since she's the one who has to birth it the hard way). And yes, there is a connection between skeletal development and brain development per the specific pelvic facilitators (separable girdle, breakable tailbone, etc.) that allow for big-headed babies to be born.
So it always puzzles me why the nay-sayers don't just accept the obvious design aspects of evolution. Does it absolutely HAVE to be 'divine intervention', or can we just take what's given and see what use we can put the knowledge to?
Comment by Joy — June 29, 2006 @ 5:02 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
Who's not accepting the design aspects of evolution? Granted, as I've been saying, biologists usually use the word "selection" instead of "design," and elaborate with descriptions of how structure is dictated by function. It's all the same thing.
The problem is when you add the label "intelligent" to the design, as if it were planned, pre-destined, or for a higher purpose – anthropomorphizing the "design aspects of evolution," in other words. As I've said, this is an acceptable theological view, but a baseless scientific view.
Comment by Daniel — June 29, 2006 @ 6:08 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Daniel:
1. If design is present and arguably 'progressive', whom does it serve? I'd say the organism in whom it most effectively expresses (also a relative scale, given humanity's position in both doing the questioning and seeking the answers). God/gods are not an issue for anything other than some people's interpretations of traditional cultural belief systems. WE are doing the investigation, WE will utilize (or not) the designs. For OUR purposes. God/gods won't have much to say about that either.
2. Why are you guys always injecting theology into science? I don't get it, honestly. You may be personally afraid of theology, and some theologians may be personally afraid of science. But who the hell cares, outside your little clubs?
Comment by Joy — June 29, 2006 @ 6:22 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
1. The structures in question perform a function, which, if it functions well for an activity that aids reproductive success, it is conserved/selected for/incorporated into the pre-existing design. It doesn't "serve" anyone's aims.
2. Um, actually, I'm trying to keep theism (or atheism) out of science. Thank the IDers for trying to return biology to the days of Paley.
My little clubs? Oh, you mean my PhD program in cell/molecular biology? Puh-leaze…
Don't insult me so with such strawmen.
Comment by Daniel — June 29, 2006 @ 6:33 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Actually, if we really want to avoid anthropomorphizing Darwinian evolution, we shouldn't use the word "design", either, since that already connotes a plan. We likewise shouldn't speak of evolution "solving" a "problem", which connotes the idea of a problem someone has in mind that they are trying to solve, or "selecting for" things, which connotes the idea of someone having a mental representation of what they want, and selecting things based on that. All these terms, in their normal use, entail intentionality, which is precisely the thing that the Darwinian mechanism is meant to dispense with. If you're trying to describe Darwinian evolution, I don't think that "intelligent" confuses things any more than those words already do. All of this sort of talk was originally supposed to be analogous. If we want to be as accurate as possible, we should say something like, "This trait is common as a result of organisms that possessed it sustaining a higher rate of net reproduction than organisms that didn't". Of course, IDers use the "intelligent" moniker to emphasize that they aren't speaking analagously about intentionality.
Comment by Deuce — June 29, 2006 @ 6:43 pm
June 29th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Daniel:
"…an activity that aids reproductive success." Who's goal is that? You'd say nobody's, but I'd laugh at the sheer amount of biodiversity, the rock-history demonstrating it has been thus for 500 million years, and the obvious directionality of this on-stage march of life forms. To each his/her/its own, I always say.
Who's this "Paley?" [yes, I'm kidding. An interesting thinker.]. You can't keep people's individual points of view out of science, whatever those points of view are. I can't even imagine why you'd bother to try. Maybe when the AI guys get whatever it is they're aiming for – and they most certainly are aiming for something, so this is 'Intelligent Design' Deluxe – you'll find there's no longer a need to fight about it. Or maybe the theologians will 'win' and it'll be at least 200 years before y'all are trying to sell consciousness-in-a-box again. Personally, I hope television has gone the way of the dinosaur by then… §;o)
Comment by Joy — June 29, 2006 @ 6:56 pm
June 30th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Sure you can – if those people aren't providing evidence to back up their claims. Science isn't some profession where anyone's point of view automatically has weight to it just because it sounds neat.
Comment by Daniel — June 30, 2006 @ 11:02 am
June 30th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Daniel:
How do "you" keep researchers' points of view out of science? [slaps forehead] Oy!
Phenomenon: Wave-particle duality.
Investigation: A century's worth of polarized light going through slitted targets, 70+ years' worth of smashed atoms.
Finding: We always observe that which we decide to measure, we never observe the opposite – but equally weighted – probability.
Conclusion: 1. Consciousness collapses wave-particle superpositions [Copenhagen]. 2. Wavefunctions do not collapse, superpositions generate alternative universes [Many Worlds].
The point of view of the researcher/theorist is reflected by the conclusions s/he reaches, though his/her point of view existed prior to the project and dictates its design, thus pre-determines the conclusion drawn. Just as the choice of *what* to measure pre-determines the form of that which is measured.
What the "Chief Science" believes it knows at this point in time: Reality is a point of view. There is evidence that reality is 'real', and an equal amount of evidence that it's not. Tegmark claims that it's not – his point of view. Penrose claims that it is – his point of view. Which point of view will you claim has no 'weight' and must not be allowed in science?
Comment by Joy — June 30, 2006 @ 12:42 pm
July 1st, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Daniel:
Joy:
Having now come full circle.
How do new traits arise?
By being spread in a population by the forces of drift and selection.
How do new traits originate?
Comment by Mung — July 1, 2006 @ 12:40 pm
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:04 am
Humphrey declares that our starting assumption as scientists ought to be that on some level consciousness has to be an illusion. I disagree.
First, what about non-scientists? Should the starting assumption of non-scientists be different? If so, why should the starting assumption of scientists be any different from the starting assumption of the non-scientist? Do scientists live in a different reality from the rest of us?
Humphrey gives what he thinks is a rational reason for the starting assumption that "on some level consciousness has to be an illusion." He states:
The reason is not so obvious. Why should scientists believe that nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness seems to have? Should not the starting assumption be, that consciousness exists, that consciousness exists in the physical world, and that therefore there is something in the physical world that can have the features that consciousness seems to have? Why should that not be our starting assumption as scientists?
Is there any other field of science which would deny that the features of something that exists in the physical world could actually exist in the physical world, and therefore the thing which has those features must be an illusion? Or is this strange mode of thinking peculiar to Humphrey's own field?
Humphrey's argument is flawed from the beginning. He has not rationally justified his starting assumption and actually wants to assume that which he desires to prove. His argument is fallicious.
As an aside, how is it that science can justify what "ougth" to be the case?
More unintelligible "reasoning."
If, as conscious subjects, we have a valid experience of something in our minds, why would we assume, think, or believe that these valid experiences are something that "the rules of the physical universe doesn't apply to?" Humphrey gives no rational justification for this claim and I can think of no good reason to accept that it is true. None at all.
Comment by Mung — July 2, 2006 @ 10:04 am
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:12 am
This is what passes for "Intelligent Thought" dear reader.
Humphrey:
I disagree. We would have to conclude that it was not an impossible to create object.
Comment by Mung — July 2, 2006 @ 11:12 am
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Humphrey's "conclusion" (which, of course, is also his starting assumption) is an unavoidable result of 'materialism.' To be true to the logic of 'materialism,' one must *always* end up denying the thing that one knows absolutely: that one oneself exists.
Now, aside from the circularity of his total "argument," which you've already noted, when you analyze this one statement, you see that the assertion is that consciousness is both an illusion and not an illusion. This is, of course, both an illogical and an irrational assertion … but what's to be expected of an "argument" the purpose of which is to dispense with rationality?
Let's look at the "obvious" reason a bit more closely:
"If nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness seems to have, then consciousness cannot exist as a thing in the physical world."
The statement appears, upon casual inspection, to be true, as far as it goes. That is, the statement appears to be a tautology (however one happens to be using 'thing'), it appears that it *must* be true, that it cannot be not-true. But, whether the statement *means* anything is another question entirely — and, of course, it is not at all up to the task to which Humphrey is attempting to put it. This is what Humphrey is attempting to assert as a logical truth:
But, of course, the THEREFORE does not follow from the IF-THEN. He left out the step in which he shows that it is indeed true that "nothing in the physical world [has] the features that consciousness seems to have." He left out the step in which he proves that he (and I, and you) do not exist and/or that he (and I, and you) do not possess the "feature" or property or characteristic or quality or attribute that we term 'consciousness.' Of course he left out that step; that step utterly impossible to prove: it can be "proven" only by self-contradiction — which is to say, cannot be proven true because it is logically false.
As Mung and others in this thread have pointed out, this "reasoning" is circular: he assumes the truth he concludes and justifies the assumption by the conclusion. (Moreover, as *everyone* immediately knows, the truth he assumes and concludes is not and cannot be actually true, for follows from self-contradiction.)
But, again, back to Humphrey's "obvious" reason:
"If nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness seems to have, then consciousness cannot exist as a thing in the physical world."
It seems clear to me that when he speaks of 'consciousness' existing or not "… as a thing in the physical world" he means as a physical thing, as a thing made of matter/energy; as an object rather than as a state or property (or "feature").
What I'm trying to bring to your attention is that his statement, his "obvious" reason, which seems upon casual inspection to at least be a truism, begins to fall apart upon closer examination.
But, of course, if 'consciousness' exists as an object, rather than being a state or property (or "feature"), then by definition "nothing in the physical world can have … consciousness" as a property (or "feature") — I think this unstated assertion is what we're supposed to get out of all this by supplying the assertion ourselves — though it does not follow that "nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness [if it were an object] seems to have." AND likewise, IF "[any]thing in the physical world can have … consciousness" as a property (or "feature"), then by definition 'consciousness' does not exist as an object, for it is a property/quality/characteristic/etc.
It seems clear to me that Humphrey expects those who read his "obvious" reason to do the mental gymnastics for themselves. That is, it seems clear to me that Humphrey expects those who read his "obvious" reason to turn "If nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness seems to have, then consciousness cannot exist as a thing in the physical world" into "If consciousness cannot exist as [an object] in the physical world, then nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness [is asserted] to have."
It seems clear to me that Humphrey's *real* syllogism (which is still illogical) is this:
But, *who* has ever claimed that 'consciousness' exists as an object, rather than being a state or property (or "feature")? (And why would anyone pay any attention to such a fool?)
Comment by Ilion — July 2, 2006 @ 1:11 pm
July 2nd, 2006 at 2:08 pm
Of course you don't *really* wonder that (it would be self-contradictory, after all).
The confusion is because 'materialists' are denying the thing they know to be true, the truth which is the foundation of all possible knowledge a person may have.
To be true to the "logic" of 'materialism,' they *must* deny the thing they know to be true. But, they cannot admit it. To admit that they are denying the thing they know to be true would be to affirm the thing they know to be true.
There is no way out for them — except to cease to be a 'materialist.' Or to attempt to brow-beat 'a-materialists' into silence.
'Materialism' is the ultimate irrationality. It is utterly impossible to have a rational argument with irrationality (yet we keep trying). It is utterly impossible for any argument you (or I) could possibly make to change the mind of a 'materialist' concerning 'materialism' — they already *know* the truth of your arguments; they are actively, consciously, intentionally denying the truth they already know.
There is nothing you can do, nothing you can say, that will free 'materialists' from their self-imposed delusion; they must themselves decide to free themselves. At best, you can hope that in attempting the impossible (that is, to have a rational argument with a 'materialist' about 'materialism') the "argument" — the utter irrationality of the 'materialist' position — will open the eyes of impressionable minds which are being swayed but haven't yet wholly committed to the seductions of 'materialism.' And, that's no small thing, after all.
Comment by Ilion — July 2, 2006 @ 2:08 pm
July 2nd, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Oh, it's even more delicious than that! We're talking time-travel here. We're talking the future determining the past, we're talking effects being their own causes.
Surely, you've noticed how frequently 'moden evolutionary theorists' in a pinch resort to such reasoning?
Bibgo! (As you surely know, having been around the block a time or two)
Comment by Ilion — July 2, 2006 @ 2:43 pm
July 19th, 2008 at 5:09 am
vintage adult babies…
How do you come up with so much material to blog with?…
Trackback by vintage adult babies — July 19, 2008 @ 5:09 am