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Sam Harris article on consciousness

Started by Ecurb Noselrub, October 15, 2011, 02:15:46 AM

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Ecurb Noselrub

Quote from: Recusant on November 21, 2011, 09:42:06 PM
Thank you for your answers, Ecurb Noselrub.  I think that it's reasonable to surmise that the ability to correlate the information of the senses, and to take cues from the environment, relate them to action, and to relate them to the self (even if the particular animal doesn't have a concept of self) could serve as the basis for consciousness. To me it seems likely that primitive forms of consciousness such as I just described would prove favorable to the survival and success of an individual and a species.

I'm not sure how much further we can take this, so at this point I'll thank you for an interesting discussion, and thank you for posting the articles by Harris.

Yes, I enjoyed it. Thanks.

xSilverPhinx

Just a quick thought on dolphins (because they're extremely intelligent creatures 8)): they're self aware and do have some rudimentary form of language, being able to be taught even how to read, or associate symbols that their trainers teach them to commands. They're also easily able to associate two or more new words to reach a new concept. Besides that they're also creative with their hunting strategies (if you like animal behaviour, you should check out some footage on youtube) and hunt in groups, which ties into the communication skills required and how they might have evolved.

As for the topic at hand, I do think you have a valid point about language though, but don't really know enough on the subject to get into that...it just interests me.

As for qualia, or experiences...I wouldn't be too quick to say that it isn't materialistic but at the same time there does seem to be something immaterial about it, at least to the one experiencing it. On the outside, thoughts can't be weighed or touched, but they can be measured.  

To use computers as an analogy to make my point, would you say that software is materialistic even though it's basically coding that is based in some hardware to result in something? But coding isn't supernatural.

If we would be able to create a computer capable of imitating human brains, in every aspect, Then this question would be easier to solve IMO, at least philosophically.
I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


Recusant

Though for my taste there's a bit too much focus on Jain religious thinking and repetition of the claim that consciousness is "mysterious," this article also touches on ideas regarding consciousness in animals other than ourselves that I promoted in this thread from years ago. The lack of any references is regrettable.

"Scientists Are Totally Rethinking Animal Cognition" | The Atlantic

QuoteIn the West, consciousness was long thought to be a divine gift bestowed solely on humans. Western philosophers historically conceived of nonhuman animals as unfeeling automatons. Even after Darwin demonstrated our kinship with animals, many scientists believed that the evolution of consciousness was a recent event. They thought the first mind sparked awake sometime after we split from chimps and bonobos. In his 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes argued that it was later still. He said the development of language led us, like Virgil, into the deep cognitive states capable of constructing experiential worlds.

This notion that consciousness was of recent vintage began to change in the decades following the Second World War, when more scientists were systematically studying the behaviors and brain states of Earth's creatures. Now each year brings a raft of new research papers, which, taken together, suggest that a great many animals are conscious.

[Continues . . .]
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration — courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth."
— H. L. Mencken


Bluenose

My thinking about conciousness was forever changed by reading Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.  Although one of the main thrusts of that book was artificial intelligence one of the key ideas was that conciousness is an emergent propoerty of the underlying structure of the brain.  I take from this that other animals are very likely to have a form of conciousness and the higher primates may well have one not all that different to our own.  The idea that humans are somehow separate from other animals seems just plain silly to me.
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