677 thoughts on “Consciousness Cannot Have Evolved”

  1. Qualia are a theorist’s illusion but the subjectivity of experience is real.

    Daniel Dennett.

  2. Alan Fox: I’ve been doing a bit of googling with “consciousness” as a regular inclusion in search word combinations and I guess that was why I received a Googlenews flash about a recently published paper. The news item linked was titled rather breathlessly:

    A TINY AREA OF THE BRAIN MAY ENABLE CONSCIOUSNESS, SAYS “EXHILARATING” STUDY

    In this case, Consciousness means the Glasgow scale. I was interested to see the approach was to combine NMR, (nuclear magnetic resonance) with EEG (electroencephalograph) to identify locations of brain activity overcoming complementary shortcomings that occur when either method is used independently.

    Um, Alan…

  3. Alan,

    You’ve told us several times that you find the concept of qualia to be incoherent. Yet you still haven’t answered the follow-up question: What is incoherent about it?

  4. Well spotted. You must get the same Google newsfeeds. 😉

    ETA I wondered about the invasiveness of the procedures used in the experiments on macaques.

    …the scientists used a dozen ceramic skull screws and dental acrylic to “affix head implants” on the monkeys, among other severely invasive measures required for the experiment, some of which were designed to immobilize the heads of the monkeys during EEG readings.

  5. CharlieM:

    If no reflective surfaces existed anywhere then we could never know our own visage.

    There’s an app for that. 🙂

  6. Alan Fox: Just to make sure I’m looking at the right concept, I see that phenomenalism gave rise to logical positivism, which its own proponents (I’m referring to AJ Ayer) owned up to it being a failure.

    Almost but not quite. Phenomenalism is the epistemological position that we are only immediately aware of our own sense-data and that physical objects are constructions that we posit in order to explain sense-data. (John Stuart Mill defined objects as “permanent possibilities of sensation”, for example.) Some logical positivists were phenomenalists; others were physicalists. (There’s a debate between Carnap and Neurath on this point, though I don’t know the details.)

    The death-blow to logical positivism came in the form of two (really quite different) criticisms, one by Quine and one by Sellars. At the time it was Quine’s criticism that was seen as the fatal cut and Sellars’s criticism was largely ignored, although the judgment of history has been that Quine’s criticism actually misses the point of logical positivism, and Sellars’s criticism is the truly devastating one: that nothing can be as absolutely unquestionable as the logical positivist requires sense-data to be.

    That history lesson aside, that doesn’t affect the validity or usefulness of phenomenal concepts.

  8. CharlieM: Tell that to your heart 🙂

    Happy St. Valentine’s Day, gentlemen, and if there is even one lady here, to you too, of course!

  9. Neil Rickert:

    CharlieM: Can you give me one attribute of the concept triangle which is subjective?

    Well no, I can’t. Since it is subjective, I do not know what attributes you ascribe to it.

    In that case can you give me your subjective opinion of any attributes of a triangle which would apply to all triangles? How would you explain what you mean by triangle to someone who had no previous knowledge of triangles without showing them an actual example of a triangle?

  10. CharlieM: How would you explain what you mean by triangle to someone who had no previous knowledge of triangles without showing them an actual example of a triangle?

    There’s nothing wrong with showing examples. But then they have to invent their own idea as to what is an ideal triangle.

  11. Rumraket:

    We do so by using our brains. Our brain processes are the means by which we can unify that which our senses give us as separate.

    I agree with this, that is one of the things our brain does, to unify sensory experience in order to produce a coherent response with adaptive potential. Finally you’re making some sense.

    I’ll treasure this moment 🙂

    As Goethe said, “Man himself, using his healthy senses, is the greatest and most exact physical instrument which there can be.”

    That sounds nice. I’m not really sure what is meant by a great and exact physical instrument, and depending on what that means I doubt I agree with it. I can certainly imagine greater and more exact physical instruments than humans.

    But in the end what they record would be meaningless without human interpretation.

  14. keiths:
    Interesting study (though not directly relevant to the OP):

    Anesthetized Monkeys Wake Up Instantly When Researchers Stimulate Brain Region Linked to Consciousness

    The monkey test doesn’t really explain anything, keiths. I’m surprised you’ve linked it. You should know well better than this…

    1. Doesn’t explain the mechanism of consciousness
    2. Thalamus seems vital in consciousness but so does cortex….
    3. How does consciousness work when 90% of the brain is removed or is missing?

    It seems consciousness is dependent on the irreducible complexity of several components of the brain…

  18. Tom,

    How would one go about establishing that a robot has no qualia?

    I doubt that it’s possible, just as I doubt that it’s possible to establish that any particular human has them.

    If I had to bet, though, I’d say that J-Mac is operating in the dark. And that his ellipsis generator is broken.

  19. J-Mac: 3. How does consciousness work when 90% of the brain is removed or is missing?

    I’m unfamiliar with that occurrence. Do you have further information? A name or a link?

  22. keiths: I doubt that it’s possible, just as I doubt that it’s possible to establish that any particular human has them.

    I’m having it right now… I’d hoped you’d had it but I’m not so sure now…

    keiths: If I had to bet, though, I’d say that J-Mac is operating in the dark.

    Never bet, especially against me… There is a higher than 50% chance of losing…
    My eclipses generator is fine…as you can see…
    Thanks for the reminder!

  23. OMagain,

    Update 3 Jan 2017: This man has a specific type of hydrocephalus known as chronic non-communicating hydrocephalus, which is where fluid slowly builds up in the brain. Rather than 90 percent of this man’s brain being missing, it’s more likely that it’s simply been compressed into the thin layer you can see in the images above. We’ve corrected the story to reflect this.
    https://www.sciencealert.com/a-man-who-lives-without-90-of-his-brain-is-challenging-our-understanding-of-consciousness

  25. Speaking of the why questions:
    Why would qualia be even needed from evolutionary point of view?
    Why consciousness?

  26. Tom English: Is being a noisebut like a being a chatbat?

    It’s all subjective…but for noisebuts you should ask Eric, though I have a feeling he has given you enough clues about your nothing but noise ideas…

  29. Neil Rickert: I’m not sure what you are asking.

    I was asking: how do you like your nominalism? And frankly, I’d prefer this time if you come back with an answer of what YOU mean by it after doing at least a search out of courtesy, rather than simply (the lazy way) asking me for a definition. Thanks.

  30. J-Mac:
    Never bet, especially against me… There is a higher than 50% chance of losing…

    Muahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! You’re the epitome of self-unwarareness.

    ETA: Someone should rebrand the Dunning-Kruger Effect as the J-Mac Syndrome.

  31. Gregory: I was asking: how do you like your nominalism?

    For mathematics, I usually say that I am a fictionalist. That’s apparently taken to be a form of nominalism.

    If you mean something other than this, then you need to be clearer.

  34. Entropy: Muahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! You’re the epitome of self-unwarareness.

    ETA: Someone should rebrand the Dunning-Kruger Effect as the J-Mac Syndrome.

    You are still holding the grudge over your origins of life failure?
    You can worship the green men from Alpha Centourie. I don’t care…

  35. J-Mac:
    You are still holding the grudge over your origins of life failure?

    You did not have to confirm what I said about you being the perfect exemplar of the Dunning-Kruger effect, but thanks for being such a good sport.

    J-Mac:
    You can worship the green men from Alpha Centourie. I don’t care…

    Are your brain’s quanta acting up? It’s you who worships imaginary beings, not me. Stop projecting.

  36. Tom English: How would one go about establishing that a robot has no qualia

    Here is a fun try at an operational test. I am not claiming he has proven his approach would work, but he does try to answer your question:

    “In this paper, we described a reductionist theory for appearance of qualia in agents based on a fully materialistic explanation for subjective states of mind, an attempt at a solution to the Hard Problem of consciousness. We defined a test for detecting experiences and showed how computers can be made conscious in terms of having qualia. Finally, we looked at implications of being able to detect and generate qualia in artificial intelligence. Should our test indicate presence of complex qualia in software or animals certain protections and rights would be appropriate to grant to such agents.”

    Detecting Qualia in Natural and Artificial Agents
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321761318_Detecting_Qualia_in_Natural_and_Artificial_Agents

  37. Entropy: You did not have to confirm what I said about you being the perfect exemplar of the Dunning-Kruger effect, but thanks for being such a good sport.

    How does one say this without considering that the person who is unaware is yourself?

    This is why EVER using that stupid concept is so fucking idiotic. “Oh, people fail to realize when they are being stupid, so see, you are stupid, and I am not because, because if I was I would realize it…”

    Stupidest concept ever, and its zero surprise that it came from Brian Dunning, and even less surprise that you would use it.

    Or maybe its a great concept, as the very act of using it shows one to be a perfect moron.

  38. keiths:

    CharlieM:

    As I see it his view on consciousness is that there is cosmic consciousness and individual consciousness. The relation between the two he likens to the relationship between a whirlpool and the whole body of water. The former being a localised instance of the latter.

    What causes the “whirlpool”, and why does individual consciousness associate itself with some objects but not others? Why are humans conscious as a whole rather than having conscious thumbs, elbows, spleens, etc.?

    He goes into detail here. Make of that what you will 😉

    Here are a few excerpts:

    I submit that cosmic dissociation happens precisely at the level of living beings with unitary consciousness, such as you and me. You and I are alters of cosmic consciousness…
    only conscious living organisms can correspond to alters of cosmic consciousness, not elementary particles or any other subset of the inanimate universe…
    Clearly, thus, even plants and single-celled organisms exhibit extrinsic behaviour somewhat analogous to our own, further suggesting that they, too, have dissociated phenomenal fields. Of course, the same cannot be said of any inanimate object or phenomenon (those that have been engineered by humans to merely simulate the behaviour of living beings, such as robots, natural language interfaces, etc., naturally don’t count).

    Dissociation or self-localisation are his terms for the features he likens to whirlpools.

  39. Corneel:

    CharlieM: Damage a fuse box in your car enough to create open circuits will negatively impact its ability to function in specific ways. Does this mean that the fuse box causes the functions affected?

    Where did I say that a brain “causes” thinking? I said that a brain is required for thinking.

    In that case I apologise for misrepresenting you.

    To state in terms of your metaphor: Yes, a car definitely requires a functional fuse box in order for you to be able to drive it.

    I could drive a car with the fuse box removed and the wires to and from the fuses connected together.

    CharlieM: Thinking is at the very beginning of my enquiry.

    So you keep saying. But that, in itself, is not a very informative observation. Why do you keep treating it as some sort of magnificent revelation?

    You started driving so that means you don’t need a car?

    I keep repeating it because again and again I read lines such as, “How does the brain think?”, or “How does the brain produce thinking?”

    This assumes that they know already what thinking is.

  40. phoodoo: How does one say this without considering that the person who is unaware is yourself?

    Quite so. I mean, telling the authors of textbooks that they have written nonsense, that for example fitness is nonsense, who could possibly be that self unaware?

  41. Kantian Naturalist:
    Here’s a quick argument against the usefulness of qualia.

    Suppose the Devil puts me and my zombie twin in a room and says “one of you has qualia and the other is a zombie. You need to figure out which is which!”

    Of course Zombie Kantian Naturalist will do everything I do, and behave identically to me — including everything that I think and say. I assert that I have qualia and that he’s the zombie. But ZKN says the exact same thing about me. How do I know that he’s wrong and I’m right? Every bit of evidence I can appeal to to justify my claim, he can also appeal to in asserting his. We’re at a stalemate.

    And then it dawns on me — how do I know that I’m not the zombie after all? After all, maybe there’s some ultra-special ineffable property that non-zombies have in their conscious experience that I don’t have. How would I know? If I’m the zombie, then conscious experience isn’t what I have — that would require some additional special property that I cannot conceptualize or imagine. And in that case it would be impossible for me to understand what it would be like to not be a zombie.

    ZKN comes to the same realization — maybe he’s the zombie, but how could he know?

    We now come to a meta-stalemate now: both of us realizing that each of us could either possess or lack a property that we cannot conceptualize or imagine, and with no way of determining which.

    At this point, both of us (being mostly rational, and equally rational) have no choice but to throw up our hands and decide that the Devil’s challenge cannot be met, even in principle.

    In other words, it’s not possible for us to determine whether or not we have qualia. Once we allow for states that are logically separate from all possible functional structures, we allow for states that are logically separate from all possible methods of verification. (This is the point of Dennett’s criticism of Chalmers.)

    How is Zombie Kantian Naturalist able to respond to the Devil’s commend if he has no experience of qualia? How would the Devil make any connection to him?

    In order to set up your proposed experiment you will require qualia to exist.

  42. Alan Fox: I think “you” covers it. It’s you that thinks and you that goes for a walk. But I also think you are a physical entity. What do you think?

    Yes I am in respect to the structure of my body. My structure is composed of the flow of material through my body (comparable to the ship of Theseus).

    We agree so far. Even though much of the materiel we consist of turns over quite rapidly, you remain you (though “you” is not fixed, either.).

    So we agree that we are more than just physical matter?

    My form however is a product of ethereal life forces. These forces are strong in youth and become weaker as we pass a specific age. Compare the fresh soft form of an infant to a stiff arthritic nonagenarian with wrinkled sagging skin.

    Your analogy is poetic but not convincing.

    That’s okay. Neither can I convince my grandchildren that vegetables are better for them than sweets 🙂

  43. Neil Rickert:

    newton: Can you have an awareness of the “ I” in “ I have immediate awareness” without knowledge from external sources?

    That’s backwards. We know about external sources by virtue of “knowing” about ourselves. But I put that “knowing” in quotes, because it might not be conscious knowledge.

    I disagree, awareness of the external world precedes self awareness. A baby cannot distinguish itself from the world.

  44. Neil Rickert:

    CharlieM: So even if they are not persuasive, are they logically thought out?

    That’s not for me to say. I don’t have access to your actual thinking.

    You only need access to what I have written

  45. keiths:
    CharlieM:

    So even if they are not persuasive, are they logically thought out?

    Neil:

    That’s not for me to say. I don’t have access to your actual thinking.

    He’s not asking you to read his mind, Neil. He’s asking you to base your judgment on what he’s actually written.

    You beat me to it 🙂

  48. Kantian Naturalist:

    petrushka: Irreducible, to me, means not designable. My argument is the inverse of the ID argument.

    I agree, and I think it’s a subtle point that’s very easy to overlook: irreducibly complex systems are systems that were not designed, because we don’t design systems that are irreducibly complex. Irreducible complexity is diagnostic of self-organizing systems.

    keiths has beaten me to it again. (and Gregory)

    Just about every machine, that has more than one or two moving parts, that I can think of, is irreducibly complex.

  49. Alan Fox:

    CharlieM: Keith Frankish’s illusionism

    Thank-you again Charlie, for encouraging me to follow the link provided by KN. I see Frankish acknowledges input from Daniel Dennett.

    One paragraph struck me:

    The first task is to be clear what we’re talking about. The term ‘consciousness’ is used in different ways, and when I claim that consciousness is illusory, I mean it only in one specific sense. We can home in on our target with an example. I’ll take vision, but any other sense would do as well. Suppose you have good sight and are focusing on a red apple directly in front of you in good lighting. You are now in a certain mental state, which we can call having a conscious visual experience of the apple. You wouldn’t be in this state if you were unconscious or asleep (though if you were dreaming, you might be in a similar state), or if you had not noticed the apple, or had noticed it only in a fleeting, subliminal way. Our lives are filled with such experiences, and no one suggests that they are not real. The question is what is involved in having such experiences, and whether it involves consciousness in a more specific sense.

    He goes on to discuss his view of how the brain models sensory inputs producing an illusion of reality. I think he makes a lot of sense. Kastrup is not so impressed:

    Frankish has accomplished precisely nothing in his long essay; at least nothing more than tortuous obfuscation and hand-waving.

    Through the power of mental fusion with neuronal collusion I have come to the conclusion that this talk of illusion is a distracting delusion. 🙂

  50. Alan Fox:

    CharlieM: But that the brain represents external reality is not an assumption made by all sides. And that is a very important point that he seems to be unaware of.

    Frankish does not assume that but rather the opposite – that brain models are imperfect to the extent of being illusory. But the bigger question for me is how our brains model reality well enough for us to function while only having neurons that can send and receive electrochemical signals of varying intensity to each other.

    What is a model if not a representation of reality.

    I am saying that the models are not in our brains they are in the external world of our perceptions. The tree I observe is actually there in reality but we see only a part of its real being. Through the combination of perceiving with our senses and seeing with our minds we have the ability to gain the full reality.

Leave a Reply