Which physical process of the body is most closely aligned to consciousness? Firing neurons?
The correlation between the self-reported state: ‘being self-aware’ & brain activity is strong but it is far from a justification for the necessity of such a state existing. Why can’t my body & mind go on living my life without awareness? Without a ‘me’ to watch & reflect on it all?
@futurebird This seems like mainly a problem of definition. What do you think "consciousness" is?
If I had to say, I'd say it has something to do with the process of abstraction. Of turning floods of stimuli into more manageable patterns and discreet symbols. And that's something that happens at all levels of the body, from cells on up.
@futurebird For everyone's consideration; I think this is closely related to John Searles' Chinese Room thought experiment arguing against "strong artificial intelligence". The Wikipedia article may well be worth reading as it explores the role, and hence the nature, of consciousness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
@futurebird Have you read Blindsight by Peter Watts? It explores questions like this in depth, all in the context of an invasion by a hyper-advanced hive-like alien species that appears to be collectively intelligent, but whose individuals don't display any of the hallmarks of consciousness.
Moreover, awareness can’t just be an accident, it must be an essential evolutionary adaptation— critical to our survival.
My current pet theory is that a state of awareness is a means to integrate emotional states (or temporal generalizations of our degree of wellbeing) with sensory information and logical reasoning. Emotions allow the recent past to persist into our future— they smear out the present making our choices better informed— 2/
But even this isn’t really a justification for the experience of being. It’s still possible to argue that all this integration could simply happen automatically without any awareness— and yet here we all are.
Could it be as simple as: since awareness is a useful adaptation for survival, since thinking you exist is adaptive, motivating self preservation and better decisions— we end up doing it? (that feels circular) 3/
What I can conclude is that any creature with firing neurons that can insist they are conscious probably is. Further creatures who act as if conscious with similar cells and chemistry are probably experiencing something— because to have a someone to have experiences, to have a mind, is a huge advantage in decision making. 4/4
@futurebird I watch out for evidence that I have thought processes going on that I’m not conscious of, like my ability to find the right key for a lock without ever consciously having identified which key goes with which lock (it’s a key ring with lots of identical keys). Seems to mean that self-consciousness is not necessary for visual processing and decision making.
One thing I think of reading and trying to follow your thoughts is:
Consciousness is like "going meta". You exist in the world, and can go thru the world without needing it. (maybe)
As an adaption it is good to see what worked and didn't later. (analyzing a previous game)
One way to do this is look at your memories and reason about your past actions.
And to do that.. You need to separate yourself from yourself.
@futurebird Peter Watts is a Canadian marine biologist turned sci-fi writer who gathered a lot of research and books on the subject. He's especially interested in how intelligence without confirmed would look like.
@futurebird Cool ideas. The ability to use emotions as a means of communicating and coordinating with other individuals would also provide a survival and reproduction benefit.