Consciousness: Remote Recognition

The issue of what constitutes consciousness is a common topic in philosophy. The word “consciousness” merely means “with-awareness”.

The Question
But a common question arises concerning the limits of that definition. If something reacts to touch, it is displaying an awareness of such touch, else how could it respond? So is it conscious of its environment?

In the case of a charged particle such as an electron, a behavior is noted that indicates that an electron is very aware of any other charged particle nearby, even without being directly touched. So is an electron conscious?

In the case of a person in a comatose state, it is hardly ever argued that they are conscious. Some will argue that there is a degree of mental activity still going on and thus perhaps a degree of consciousness, but certainly not what we call fully conscious. Yet the ears still react to sounds and send signals through nerves into the brain. They are in a sense, aware that they have been touched by their environment. So are the ears and nerves conscious?

The Distinction
There is a clear distinction that can be made between the more common usage of the term “consciousness” and the apparent awareness that inanimate objects display. That distinction can be made by the attempt at recognition of the source of stimulation.

In the case of the electron, it has been shown that an electron will not actually respond to the removal of a nearby charged particle until enough time is given for the field of that remote charge to also fade away. After the field immediately surrounding the electron has changed, the electron will respond accordingly. This indicates that such particles are not actually aware of the remote particle, but rather aware of the field immediately surrounding them.

But also there is strong evidence that an electron cannot distinguish any one charged particle from another as long as the charge field is the same. In fact, as long as the field surrounding the electron is the same, no remote particle need be involved. The electron reacts merely to the field itself regardless of source. There appears to be no evidence that an electron is attempting to recognize anything.

Also in the case of the comatose person, the ears and nerves make no attempt to recognize the remote cause of the sounds to which they respond. Recognition requires memory, association, and locating algorithms not present in the ears or signaling nerves.

Thus it can be said that inanimate objects and creatures that have a disabled mental functioning, are not conscious even though there is still purely physical awareness of environment.

Since that distinction can be made, other philosophical issues can be clarified.

The Universe
It has been long argued that the universe itself is a conscious entity regardless of any people or living creatures within it. The universe is certainly an entity that reacts to stimulation. It can be argued that the universe is made of nothing but such reactions. So is the universe conscious?

There is strong evidence that the universe does not attempt to recognize any source of stimulation any more than that electron. It merely reacts to immediate surrounding conditions and nothing more. As long as the immediate surroundings are the same, the reactions are the same. Thus it can be concluded that the universe itself is not conscious.

God and the Materialist
This conclusion gives the atheist and/or materialist just cause for denying that a universe, exclusive of living or artificial mechanisms within, is conscious. Fortunately for those religious people who understand that God is not the universe itself, such a conclusion is irrelevant.

Also just as it is said that God is outside of time, meaning that time has no association or relationship to God, God is also outside of consciousness. The ever-present God has no need whatsoever for recognition algorithms or memory banks.

I didn’t say that ALL philosophical issues would be resolved. :mrgreen:

The distinctions Floridi makes (which are taken from other philosophers and cobbled together in The Philosophy of Information) I think make for good coverage. It separates simple “awareness” as two types of e-consciousness, or merely “switched on”. P-consciousness would be like the philosophical zombies we sometimes use in arguments, basically having the ability to sense various parts of the environment. S-Consciousness is that (so far, but not for long) peculiarly human consciousness in which one is aware that one is aware of oneself.

Your electrons would be E1 conscious, meaning that they are on and reactive.

The comatose person has lost S and P consciousness and merely twitches and so forth. They can still be called E1 conscious.

Then you get into god and stop making sense/philosophically interesting arguments.

Being a far cry from an expert on PI, I have to ask if it makes a clear distinction between an entity that attempts to answer the question, “What remote affect/entity is causing the immediate affect” and one that doesn’t?

The physical distinction involves algorithms concerning affect association and memory. Any entity without such algorithms cannot be said to have “knowledge” even though it has “information”. Consciousness involves knowledge, not merely information.

An S conscious being can probably ask that question. The example used is as such: 3 agents are in a room and are given a pill that has a 50% chance of causing them to lose the ability to speak. Ask them “Which pill did you take?” An S Conscious being will take the pill, and open his mouth to say he doesn’t know, and hear his voice. He will then conclude that he must not have been given the muting pill. A merely P Conscious agent would say “I don’t know” and leave it at that.

The S conscious agent can recognize itself AND remote entities, and that it itself is an entity. A P Conscious agent cannot.

EDIT: And knowledge is distinct from information in that it is information that is accounted for in a coherent way.

Well this is getting interesting on several levels and might inspire me to wonder which of those pills we were each given.

Your example as a response to my question is an example explicit of your example (did you follow that?).

You were asked a question and you replied. But did you deduce from your reply whether you answered my question (much like your CP/CS subjects)?

In your example, the CS person can deduce from what is concurrently happening what other facts must be true, that he must not have received the effect being inquired about. The CP person could not make such deduction. Thus you have given an example concerning cognitive functioning (a very hot topic in subject perception control). But did you use that same deductive functioning that you exampled in your response so as to realize whether your response answered the question being asked?

Our exchange at this moment is reminding me of the distinction between Rational Metaphysics and Physics. RM is about why the laws of physics are what they are, whereas Physics is about what can be deduced because the laws are what they are. Physics detects and assumes the laws, not really caring why they exist (not very much anyway). RM doesn’t care all that much what they are but rather what causes them to exist at all.

By analogy, your example refers to 2 levels of consciousness with consciousness already assumed, what I could call levels “C1” and “C2”. But the distinction that I am referring to would be between levels “C0” and “C1”.

Your CP subject is my C1 and demonstrated the following cognitive abilities;

  1. recognition of words.
  2. recognition of sentence.
  3. recognition of question.
  4. solicitation of response.
  5. assessment of threat.
  6. formulation of response.
  7. execution of formulated response.

All of those require a basic level of consciousness.
A C0 level of consciousness (C0 meaning zero consciousness) would not recognize that the sounds striking his ears were words and thus not be able to continue the sequence.

Cognitive deduction involves higher levels of concern that assume that there is basic consciousness with which to begin. What use is there for an unconscious “agent”. :sunglasses:

And although I don’t disagree that knowledge requires coherency, I would say that information actually does also.
To me the distinction is that knowledge is information related to or associated with another entity besides the information itself (thus non-self-referencing). All existence contains information merely via distinction (hence coherency). But knowledge is more specific in that it is a form of existence that reflects the information concerning some other existence, much like a picture that displays an object. A blank picture is still information, but is not knowledge in itself, but rather a “place holder” for knowledge (also much like an empty space).

None of my agents were unconscious. don’t forget E1 and E2 consciousness! at any rate S Conscious agents can do what you asked of them

A) What does the “E” stand for?
B) My point was that your example was merely the distinction between levels of answer to the question. Both CP and CS answered the question, “What remote affect/entity is causing the immediate affect”, in that they could both discern words being sent such as to solicit a response from them.

Your “E” subjects might be the distinction what I was asking about, but I can’t discern the exact distinction between an E subject and a C subject. That is why I requested more information (“knowledge - coherency”).

The E doesn’t stand for anything worth remembering. the P stands for phenomenological consciousness. The S, I don’t remember either.

the p conscious agent did not answer the question because it had no idea what entity was causing the immediate effect. the s conscious agent knew what was up.

The CP subject did answer the question that I asked about. He didn’t answer the inquisitor’s question. He answered the question that I was referring to within his own mind else he could not have known to respond with even an “I don’t know”.

That P standing for “phenomenological” infers that the formulator of the standard didn’t know what causes consciousness to begin with, hence a phenomena. So he probably didn’t make the distinction that I am talking about. But seems an interesting subject matter anyway, merely one concerning Levels of consciousness rather than the exact distinction between conscious and unconscious, between zero and the first sign of consciousness. My claim is that such a distinction can be demarcated by any attempt (accurate or not) to answer that question (“What remote affect/entity is causing the immediate affect”) within the entity itself. Whether it could answer to a questioner, is another matter.

My guess is that consciousness and what animals display is essentially the same thing, the difference being that we have a better memory, and able to process more information at once.

If two rocks where travelling and one was travelling 1000 kilometers faster than the other would you say they are both travelling or that would you try and give them a differing definition?

if god is not the universe what is god then?

Yes, as long as it is attempting to identify objects, for whatever reason, it is conscious.
After that, it is merely a question of type and degree, “of what is it conscious”.
Homosapian has a greater ability to plan in advance, being inwardly conscious of many rational steps toward a goal.
The animal has far less such ability and tends to only be aware of strategies concerning what is within its present vision.
Its inner vision tends to be limited to merely one thought or another rather than a longer sequence of subgoals, “rational planning”.

God, by definition, is the ever-present, ongoing cause of the universe, the reason that the universe persists.

A Reason for something has nothing to do with the concept of being conscious. A Reason is neither conscious nor unconscious. Although it can be said to be aware of the situation to which it applies in that it contains within it all of the information for the actions that result. In the case of God, that would be all things, “omniscient”.

The “I don’t know” isn’t really an answer to the question, it’s giving up on finding one.

This shows that you don’t know what you’re talking about at all. The P is in reference to the consciousness OF phenomena, not whatever foolishness you thought it meant.

Probably more intelligent that way anyway.

You are displaying an unconsciousness of something.
There are 2 questions involved.
One is a question within the subject to the subject, a question that he is asking himself.
The other is a question coming from outside of the subject soliciting a response.

His reply, “I don’t know” means that he gave up on the question coming from someone outside himself.
But he couldn’t have even known a question had been asked if he didn’t first answer the inner question to himself, “what is this noise hitting my eardrum?” He deduced that it was a solicitation from a friendly enough source for him to reply to it.

To be unconscious would mean that he could not discern that a question was being asked.

I seriously doubt that. But, no need to offend your religion, nor for you to take offense at every potential sign of it.

So it could be conscious of field but not of particles - though I am not sure, in the end, what the distinction is. We would react the same to the removal of something, if whatevery was stimulating our senses had not changed. Remove the sun and we won’t react for 8 minutes or whatever it is.

We don’t react differently things we cannot distinguish. I will confuse identical twins if I do not know them well.

But the brain may very well attempt, or rather simply take in stimuli during comatose states. At least some people have had this experience.

I think from a scientific perspective we can conclude that there is insufficient evidence to conclude it is not sentient. But drawing some conclusion one way or the other seems off to me. We are just finding, for example, evidence that plants are aware in ways we associated only with animals. And before that animals were considered not to be conscious but rather were considered or considered to be possibly mere organic machines. Mainstream science followed at least part of the judaochristian tradition on this one and only in the last few decades has it become not damaging to one’s career to assume animals are conscious, have intentions, etc.

Humans have a bias against assigning awareness, etc., to ‘things’ not like humans. In fact some humans even had a lot of trouble granting this to women, other races, etc. Until such biases are gone and until we really understand in a deeper way what consciousness is and what, if any, the physical correlates are, it seems to be way too early to start ruling out X having consciousness.

So you are saying that regardless of what anyone says or what you think is going to happen a little later, you don’t actually do anything at all until it happens directly to your body?

Yes, that would make you an unconscious being… and incapable of even breathing.

But you try to distinguish. That is all that is required, not the total accuracy of your attempts.

If Science has bothered to define “sentient” in scientific terms then it certainly has plenty of evidence that the universe itself has no such quality.

That is why this thesis exists, to answer that question with reasoning rather than preferred traditions or prejudices.

If someone I trust says something and their words reach me via my body, sure I can respond to that. I mean, the truth is I believe in action at a distance. But that opens a can of worms.

My breathing is in reaction to my body’s needs, in fact it has its own momentum, but from within. I don’t need other to tell me.

So electrons are not conscious because they are not trying?

Scientists certainly rule out, generally, the universe being sentient. But they have a poor history of ruling such things out along anthropocentric lines.

fine, but until we know why some matter is conscious and some is not, if this is the case, and what the mechanism is, I don’t see how we can rule out consciousness in any specific X. It’s speculation.

It does very little good to try to locate or identify something until you have a clear definition of what it is. As society gets more detailed and specific, with Science and all, common definitions need more specification added to their prior use.

By making the distinction between an entity that is making an effort to recognize remote sources of affects, a more precise and useful definition for what it means to be conscious can be formed. Without similar concerns being answered, pointless arguments merely go on forever.

Inanimate entities (not artificially designed to do so) do not make the effort to recognize remote objects, hence are not conscious.

Living entities (still functioning well enough) do make such effort to recognize remote entities, hence are conscious to the extent that they do so. As pointed out, there are levels of consciousness also. The point is that it starts when such a question is being asked by the entity.

Hi friends,

Some interesting and insightful thoughts are posted in this thread. I am feeling that this topic is bit like artificial intelligence as we are trying to find whether an electron or universe is conscious or not.

It is rightly said that consciousness means awareness; reacting or responding to something. But, I feel that we are missing a very important point; the degree or the type of response as this can cause all the difference.

Each and every thing in this universe, dead or alive, conscious or unconscious, reacts or responds to the surroundings and circumstances and thus changes more or less with every passing moment. It is inevitable and there is no exception for this law. This is the very basic and fundamental rule of universe otherwise it would not have existed so far. The reason for this phenomenon is very simple; time. This universe lives in time and thus bound to change. We are not in any kind of static form but in the constant state of flux.

So, this is to say that merely changing, reacting or responding to the surroundings does not proof that any particular entity is conscious. It demands certainly more than that.

I am not very fond of highly intellectual language as it tends to confuse. Examples and parables are far easier to understand so let me take an example to clear my point.

Let us imagine that a child is standing by a tub of hot water. He has a thermometer in his one hand and wants to check the temperature of the water. At first he puts the tip of meter in the water. It gives the reading but the child is not wise enough to understand it so he decides to the check the temperature with the other hand. As the tip of his finger just touches the water, he reacts instantly and withdraws his hand as the water is too hot for him to bear.

So, we can see that there are two entirely different reactions for the same event. Why?

[b]This is to say that only reaction is not important while looking for consciousness. The more important parameter is intension that causes the reaction.

Thus, we can say that there are two types of responses. The first one is mechanical type which is very precise, accurate and repetitive while the other one may be different in all cases but caused by intellect and intension thus this aspect should be kept in mind holding any entity a conscious one. [/b]

At least, that is my opinion.

with love
sanjay

Consciousness is a mechanism of the brain by which it makes thinking more efficient. Being aware actually is focusing on a piece of information. what you concentrate on is determined by conditioning, pain and pleasure responses, in this way consciousness is reduced to a simple reaction driven by innate functions of the body, the only thing difference from us and an object is the ability to learn and imagine, apart from that we are simply organic machines.

if a machine where made where the machine could be able to associate between different sensorial stimuli, and was given 3 basic innate functions commands, avoid pain seek pleasure, and where able to imagine, then that robot would develop the same as a human. (assuming they have the same memory capacity and processing speed.)