677 thoughts on “Consciousness Cannot Have Evolved”

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

    That’s a great point, phoodoo!

    I wouldn’t spend too much time arguing with those who think everyone is stupid unless you, like them, refuse to believe in a “man in the sky”…

    This is a perfect example of free will…
    Can you imagine what would happen if God came down and everyone would have no choice but to believe?
    Can you imagine spending time in another life with people who don’t want the pink dress?
    That’s why there is the faith aspect, which gives you a choice…

    I find this concept amazing, don’t you?😊

  2. CharlieM: 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.

    Too bad begging the question is not an olympic discipline.

  3. J-Mac: Can you imagine what would happen if God came down and everyone would have no choice but to believe?

    Still would have a choice, but the evidence for divine existence would be stronger than currently exists.

    Can you imagine spending time in another life with people who don’t want the pink dress?

    Don’t forget people who disagree who is wearing the right shade of pink.

    That’s why there is the faith aspect, which gives you a choice…

    Faith alone won’t do it, you have to pick the right horse, too. If not , you end up in the same place as the unbelievers.

    I find this concept amazing, don’t you?😊

    Yes, so many Gods to choose from.

  4. 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.

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

    I’ve really tried to engage…
    Most people, when there is something wrong going on, and it is pointed out to them , such as when they are going against the traffic on one way street, or when their car stop light is not working, they show appreciation…

    You are NOT one of those people…unfortunately…

    You are one of the very few who respond like: “Mind your own business, pal! I know what I’m doing. Get lost buddy!

    What would most people do with subjects like you?
    I think it is self explanatory, isn’t it?

  5. newton: Still would have a choice,

    That’s true but then disbelif would be totally inexcusable.

    newton: the evidence for divine existence would be stronger than currently exists.

    Stronger??? Really??? Lol

    newton: Don’t forget people who disagree who is wearing the right shade of pink.

    What do you mean, exactly?

    newton: Faith alone won’t do it, you have to pick the right horse, too. If not , you end up in the same place as the unbelievers.

    It has to be some evidence-based-faith – e.i. creation: bolt of lightning vs superior intelligence, for example.

    newton: Yes, so many Gods to choose from.

    Actually, people who believe in God, one God, believe in the same God. It’s religions that misrepresent Him…

  6. Keith Frankish from Bruce’s link

    Now my suggestion is that the human brain monitors its own reactive dispositions and generates schematic representations of them, which are linked to its representations of the objects that triggered them.

    Would that be the real brain or the illusory brain?

  7. CharlieM: 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.

    My thought-experiment was based on how David Chalmers sets up the logical possibility of zombies in The Conscious Mind. He is quite clear that zombies are behaviorally indistinguishable from beings with qualia. As a result everything that a person with qualia would do and say, so would a zombie — including everything that a being with qualia would assert, infer, affirm, negate, etc. There would not be any way to determine if the person you are arguing with is a zombie or not.

  8. J-Mac: newton: Still would have a choice,

    That’s true but then disbelif would be totally inexcusable.

    Maybe so, though the Aztecs believed Cortes was Quetzalcoatl, didn’t work out too good for them.

    newton: the evidence for divine existence would be stronger than currently exists.

    Stronger??? Really??? Lol

    Sure, look at the Old Testament, parting the Red Sea, more or less evidence that their version of the deity existed. Obviously the narrative would be less persuasive support of the Jewish God if the Jews were slaughtered on the shores of the Red Sea by Pharaoh.
    God appearing would be more evidence for God’s existence than God not appearing.

    newton: Don’t forget people who disagree who is wearing the right shade of pink.

    What do you mean, exactly?

    The obvious, just being a theist doesn’t mean you believe in the same One True God.

    newton: Faith alone won’t do it, you have to pick the right horse, too. If not , you end up in the same place as the unbelievers.

    It has to be some evidence-based-faith – e.i. creation: bolt of lightning vs superior intelligence, for example.

    More evidence ,more support in evidence based faith.

    newton: Yes, so many Gods to choose from.

    Actually, people who believe in God, one God, believe in the same God. It’s religions that misrepresent Him…

    In your opinion, evidence?

  9. Kantian Naturalist: My thought-experiment was based on how David Chalmers sets up the logical possibility of zombies in The Conscious Mind. He is quite clear that zombies are behaviorally indistinguishable from beings with qualia. As a result everything that a person with qualia would do and say, so would a zombie — including everything that a being with qualia would assert, infer, affirm, negate, etc. There would not be any way to determine if the person you are arguing with is a zombie or not.

    This is interesting… Do you have the link or page #?

  10. newton: Maybe so, though the Aztecs believed Cortes was Quetzalcoatl, didn’t work out too good for them.

    So? How’s that related to the inexcusable evidence, like the parting of the sea, for example?

    newton: Sure, look at the Old Testament, parting the Red Sea, more or less evidence that their version of the deity existed. Obviously the narrative would be less persuasive support of the Jewish God if the Jews were slaughtered on the shores of the Red Sea by Pharaoh.
    God appearing would be more evidence for God’s existence than God not appearing.

    That’s why the rebellion after the crossing the Red Sea was inexcusable. There were justified consequences…

    newton: The obvious, just being a theist doesn’t mean you believe in the same One True God.

    That’s true but it is because religions often misrepresent the same God.
    The 3 major religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam relate to the God of Abraham; they don’t deny it…

    newton: In your opinion, evidence?

    It’s evidence as mentioned above

  11. Kantian Naturalist: He is quite clear that zombies are behaviorally indistinguishable from beings with qualia.

    The problem I see with this argument is that there is no range of how beings behave, so what does it mean they behave the same? How would something behave “differently” than a human being? Is that possible?

    What behavior can humans not do?

    Its like saying, I have built something that looks exactly like a robot. Then if you said, “well, what does a robot look like?”, and you said, “anything you want it to.” Then how could you ever build anything that doesn’t look like a robot?

  12. What really matters in consciousness is the NOW awareness or perception…in my view. It’s a constant shift of the timeframe of the NOW experience into the very near future, and the already experienced the NOW moment into the near past. The past experience of the NOW begins to fade away, unless something traumatic has occurred…
    This in my view the NOW awareness or perception has no evolutionary advantage whatever…

  13. KN:

    He is quite clear that zombies are behaviorally indistinguishable from beings with qualia.

    phoodoo:

    The problem I see with this argument is that there is no range of how beings behave, so what does it mean they behave the same? How would something behave “differently” than a human being? Is that possible?

    phoodoo,

    The kind of indistinguishability he’s talking about is between a single person and his or her zombie counterpart, not between the human race and the “zombie race” as a whole.

    Set up two identical universes. Put Qualia Keith in one and Zombie Keith in the other, keeping everything else the same. At 3:42 PM Qualia Keith feels an itch and scratches his right eyebrow. At exactly the same moment, Zombie Keith “feels” a corresponding itch and scratches his right eyebrow. The only difference is that the itch quale is absent from Zombie Keith, because there’s “no one home” to experience it. The physics is the same and the information processing is the same. The only difference is the presence of the quale in one universe and its absence in the other.

    All of this follows from the definition of a zombie.

  14. keiths,

    keiths,
    You used to be a theist, right?
    If consciousness did not, or could not have evolved, where did it come from?
    What are the implications, if a higher being, possibly outside of time, is behind it?
    If consciousness is related to quantum information in some sense and quantum information can’t be destroyed, what could that mean?
    You are smarter than most here… What are your thoughts?

    BTW: How’s life? How are you keeping?

  15. Consciousness: New Concepts and Neural Networks

    “The definition of consciousness remains a difficult issue that requires urgent understanding and resolution. Currently, consciousness research is an intensely focused area of neuroscience. However, to establish a greater understanding of the concept of consciousness, more detailed, intrinsic neurobiological research is needed. Additionally, an accurate assessment of the level of consciousness may strengthen our awareness of this concept and provide new ideas for patients undergoing clinical treatment of consciousness disorders. In addition, research efforts that help elucidate the concept of consciousness have important scientific and clinical significance. This review presents the latest progress in consciousness research and proposes our assumptions with regard to the network of consciousness.”
    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncel.2019.00302/full

  16. I am looking forward to seeing an argument against the propositions set forth in the article which provoked the OP.

    The sooner the better?

  18. J-Mac quotes an article:

    The definition of consciousness remains a difficult issue that requires urgent understanding and resolution.

    J-Mac,

    There is no single definition of consciousness. As I remarked earlier in the thread:

    Many words in English have multiple meanings, and this can cause some confusion at times, yet fluent speakers don’t demand a formal definition every time they see one of these words.

    My argument isn’t against definitions, it’s against definition trolling.

  19. J-Mac:

    You used to be a theist, right?

    Yes.

    If consciousness did not, or could not have evolved, where did it come from?

    I believe that it did evolve, contrary to Kastrup.

  20. keiths:
    KN:

    phoodoo:

    phoodoo,

    The kind of indistinguishability he’s talking about is between a single person and his or her zombie counterpart, not between the human race and the “zombie race” as a whole.

    Set up two identical universes.Put Qualia Keith in one and Zombie Keith in the other, keeping everything else the same.At 3:42 PM Qualia Keith feels an itch and scratches his right eyebrow.At exactly the same moment, Zombie Keith “feels” a corresponding itch and scratches his right eyebrow.The only difference is that the itch quale is absent from Zombie Keith, because there’s “no one home” to experience it.The physics is the same and the information processing is the same. The only difference is the presence of the quale in one universe and its absence in the other.

    All of this follows from the definition of a zombie.

    Well, one either knows the “real” Keith or doesn’t.

    If one knows the real Keith, then I could quite possibly fool the Zombie keith, because the zombie keith has no way of knowing all of the shared experiences the observer and the real keiths have shared. There is no way to extract the feelings and emotions from the real keith to the zombie keith.

    On the other hand, if you are just talking to some generic zombie, well, then it is back to my original point. There is no behavior that a human can’t display, therefore, a robot could be made to act like a human, although it remains to be seen if that fake human could be convincing enough to not at least be considered weird. We haven’t been able to make a computer yet we couldn’t fool. For instance, computers are not good at making up new jokes.

  24. phoodoo,

    It was just to illustrate the weakness of the pzombie argument. I contend there is a fundamental barrier that prevents any sentient entity from constructing another as intelligent as itself. That only happens by reproduction and evolution.

  25. Alan Fox,

    I think I can make a perfect zombie of Alan Fox, let me try:

    Observer: Alan, why can’t bacteria in a lab ever be manipulated to become something other than bacteria. Why can’t we make bacteria become a dog?

    Alan: Systematics are part of a theoretical framework of complexity overhaul. And don’t forget the non-random selection aspect!

    Now, do you think anyone could ever tell if its the real Alan or the Zombie? No fucking way.

  26. phoodoo,

    If one knows the real Keith, then I could quite possibly fool the Zombie keith, because the zombie keith has no way of knowing all of the shared experiences the observer and the real keiths have shared.

    Qualia Keith has spent his entire life in one universe, and Zombie Keith in another identical universe. Any past experiences that Qualia Keith has in universe 1 will match those had by Zombie Keith in universe 2. Therefore there is no question you can ask the two Keiths for which their answers will differ.

    That includes questions about qualia themselves, which is where things get interesting.

  27. phoodoo: Now, do you think anyone could ever tell if its the real Alan or the Zombie? No fucking way.

    Well, right. That’s the point.

  29. Alan:

    It [the Star Trek example] was just to illustrate the weakness of the pzombie argument.

    How so?

  30. keiths:

    That includes questions about qualia themselves, which is where things get interesting.

    Alan:

    How so?

    Because Zombie Keith has never experienced qualia, but will answer questions as if he had. And he won’t just answer them, he’ll answer them identically to Qualia Keith.

  31. keiths,

    Because two Kirks are indistinguishable.

    Why do you think qualia are interesting when the neuroscientific community has no use for them, whatever they are?

  32. keiths: Because Zombie Keith has never experienced qualia, but will answer questions as if he had. And he won’t just answer them, he’ll answer them identically to Qualia Keith.

    I agree. What can we conclude?

  33. Alan,

    Because two Kirks are indistinguishable.

    How does that present a problem for the p-zombie argument?

  34. keiths,

    Because the two Kirks are indistinguishable (identical), they both do or do not experience “qualia”, whatever they are.

  35. Alan,

    Why do you think qualia are interesting when the neuroscientific community has no use for them, whatever they are?

    They’re interesting because no one has explained why they arise from certain patterns of information processing.

  37. Alan,

    Has anyone explained what they are successfully enough to interest a neuroscientist?

    That doesn’t parse corrrectly. Try again?

  38. keiths:[Qualia are] interesting because no one has explained why they arise from certain patterns of information processing.

    Reframe the question as how does human thinking cash out in terms of neurons firing and I’ll agree with you. Qualia are a dead-end.

  41. Alan,

    Are you kidding? Neuroscientists are extremely interested in qualia. They would love to solve the hard problem if they could.

  42. Alan, a reminder:

    keiths:

    I’m still interested in hearing why you think the concept of qualia is incoherent.

    CharlieM:

    So am I.

  43. keiths,
    Admittedly I base my claim on an anecdote from one neuroscientist. Do you notice “qualia” currently being promoted in scientific papers on brain function?

  44. keiths,
    To save repetition let me concede on incoherent and change to useless. Qualia add nothing explanatory to understanding how thinking emerges from brain activity which is why neuroscientists largely ignore the concept.

  46. Alan,

    To save repetition let me concede on incoherent and change to useless.

    Thank you. Still wrong, but less so.

  47. keiths: Any past experiences that Qualia Keith has in universe 1 will match those had by Zombie Keith in universe 2.

    I don’t know what you mean by experience. I think only conscious beings can experience things, so if the zombie experiences things, it is not a zombie. More like a replica.

    Does a computer experience things?

  48. Alan,

    Qualia add nothing explanatory to understanding how thinking emerges from brain activity which is why neuroscientists largely ignore the concept.

    Neuroscientists largely ignore qualia in their papers because the subject is too difficult. They would love to solve it, but the hard problem is called “hard” for a reason.

    That doesn’t mean they aren’t interested.

    Here are some comments from Christof Koch:

    Having devoted much of his life to uncovering “how a highly organized piece of matter can possess an interior perspective,” Koch considers one of the most interesting questions of consciousness — that of qualia, the subjective interiority of experiences…

    Koch writes:

    What it feels like to have a particular experience is the quale of that experience: The quale of the color red is what is common to such disparate percepts as seeing a red sunset, the red flag of China, arterial blood, a ruby gemstone, and Homer’s wine-dark sea. The common denominator of all these subjective states is “redness.” Qualia are the raw feelings, the elements that make up any one conscious experience.

    Some qualia are elemental — the color yellow, the abrupt and overpowering pain of a muscle spam in the lower back, or the feeling of familiarity in déjà vu. Others are composites — the smell and feel of my dogs snuggling up against me, the “Aha!” of sudden understanding, or the distinct memory of being utterly transfixed when I first heard the immortal lines: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’ve watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” To have an experience means to have qualia, and the qualia of an experience are what specifies that experience and makes it different from other experiences.

    Qualia, this romantic reductionist asserts, are inherent properties of the natural world rather than manifestations of divinity or the supernatural — they arise from laws yet to be discovered, but decidedly discoverable, belonging to the ultimate frontiers of science which mathematician Marcus du Sautoy has termed “the great unknown.” But they also raise enormous attendant questions about whether elementary particles have qualia or qualia exist only in complex systems like brains, that is, whether consciousness is a binary faculty or it exists on a continuum; questions that echo Alan Turing’s famous puzzlement about whether a computer could ever enjoy strawberries and cream and even Goethe’s attempt to decipher the psychology of color perception and emotion.

    Koch follows this train of inquiry further:

    Understanding how qualia come about is just the first step toward eliminating the “problem” from the mind-body problem. Next in line is comprehending the particular way that a specific quale feels. Why does red feel the way it does, which is very different from blue? Colors are not abstract, arbitrary symbols: they represent something meaningful. If you ask people whether the color orange is situated between red and yellow or between blue and purple, those with normal eyesight will chose the former. There is an inborn organization to color qualia. Indeed, colors can be arranged in a circle, the color wheel. This arrangement is different from that of other sensations, such as the sense of depth or of pitch, which are arranged in a linear sequence. Why? As a group, color percepts share certain commonalities that make them different from other percepts, such as seeing motion or smelling a rose. Why?

  49. phoodoo,

    I don’t know what you mean by experience. I think only conscious beings can experience things, so if the zombie experiences things, it is not a zombie.

    Ned Block coined the terms “access consciousness” and “phenomenal consciousness” to refer to the two kinds of conscious experience. Some Googling of those terms might be helpful. (Phenomenal consciousness is the kind that Kastrup thinks can’t evolve.)

    Zombie Keith has access consciousness but not phenomenal consciousness. Qualia Keith has both kinds. Access consciousness is all that is needed for Zombie Keith to answer any questions identically to Qualia Keith.

    The difference is that Qualia Keith actually feels the experiences as they happen, while Zombie Keith merely processes them. Either way, the memories are identical.

    In short, it’s “like something” to be Qualia Keith, but there’s “no one home” inside Zombie Keith. All of the information processing remains the same between the two Keiths.

  50. BruceS,

    I have listened to most of this podcast you linked to. It seems to me that Keith Frankish is a philosopher that takes classical physics seriously and he uses this as his starting point for his illusionism philosophy.

    But physics has moved on from the view that matter can be reduced to a fundamental objective reality lying behind our phenomenal world. And this is where his theory comes apart.

    In the book
    The Monastery and the Microscope: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Mind, Mindfulness, and the Nature of Reality     edited by Wendy Hasenkamp, Janna R. White, Arthur Zajonc is in conversation with the Dalai Lama.

    Here is an excerpt:

    Zajonc: Bohm said, “The analysis of the world into constituent objects has been replaced by its analysis in terms of events and processes?“ We so much want the world to be made of objects like glasses and bowls and Kleenex boxes and computers, and then on the microscopic scale of cells and neurons and atoms and molecules. Bohm is making a very powerful statement, that this is a wrong view. Really what one has are “events,” that is, phenomena that arise, and “processes,” or the way in which they evolve in time. They have the appearance of objects of enduring nature, but what is more primary are the events, the phenomena, and their development. For that you always have to take into account the role of subjective elements.

    I want to emphasize that this is not a world of chaos. In fact, it is an ordered universe. People think, “Oh, my gosh, between quantum physics and relativity theory, it’s just going to be crazy!” Yet in order to have a universe where the laws of physics operate, Einstein deduced that these are the kinds of things that must be true. And then we research them in the laboratory and we find that, yes, they are true. This is actually something of great beauty, of great harmony, of great possibility. Yet it‘s something that ties the reference frame, the place of the observer, with that which is to be investigated, so that the world is constantly arising from the two sides as phenomena.

    What are some of the implications of this view? I think it’s wrong to see and look for a single objective state of affairs. As Bohm says, objects are now being replaced. To think that there’s just a single state of affairs that everyone will see in a consistent way is not the case. We have to understand the changes that are associated with context.

    He goes on to explain the reality that Frankish forgets:

    Zajonc: There is also a fundamental observer dependence. There’s always a vantage point. You either have a real observer or an imagined observer that gives you context. To forget the observer is a fallacy.

    Now, here’s another thing that l believe must be the case: What I‘ve just said has to be true at every level. It”s not like you get to a certain place and then you break through to objective reality or the absolute. These same considerations regarding context or relationships are operative at every level.

    He then refers to the familiar “turtles all the way down” story:

    Zajonc: There is a story that comes from the ancient Greeks. They were trying to understand how the earth was supported. They said the earth must be on the hack oi an elephant, but when asked, “Well, what’s supporting the elephant?” someone said that supporting the elephant was a big turtle.

    So the earth rests on the back of the elephant, and then you can ask what the elephant stands on, and the answer is a turtle. Then some- one said, “What did the turtle stand on?” After that it was said, “It’s turtles all the way down.” It’s just the same thing all the way down. More and more turtles.

    Dalai Lama: There is a similar origin myth in the classical Indian tradition. Again the earth is supported on the back of a turtle

    The objective world that Frankish would like to insert behind the yellowness of the banana is as much, if not greater, an illusion than the phenomenal world he is trying to explain away.

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