What's so hard to understand here? — apokrisis

Your views. Thanks for explaining further.

I was just asking, because I'm interested, if you intended your statement to be chiefly conceptual, or emprical, or something else. I can't quite see an answer to that. You don't have to answer if you don't want to of course. I didn't intend to go on about the hard problem again, although no doubt I will again at some point.

At best, consciousness = attention + reporting. — apokrisis

Are you offering this more as a definition or a theory? Or perhaps more of a conceptual clarification (which I guess is closer to definition)? Or something else?

When we speak of pain and joy, are speaking of any other consciousness than human consciousness? No. Sharks have shark physiology. Insects have insect physiology. It’s an anthropomorphic mistake to assume they feel the same. — NOS4A2

The claim is not that they feel the same kinds of things as humans necessarily, it's that they feel something at all. Insects are conscious, but they feel insecty things.

I presume that minimal "experience"*1 means to sense (to be affected by) incoming energy/information . And ultimately perhaps to make sense (meaning) of that data. — Gnomon

I think that presumption is wrong in the context of panpsychism. I suspect that's not what most panpsychists mean.

Is the word "experiential" in this usage, a metaphor for conscious human subjective experience? Or does he really believe that atoms are literally aware of their environment? — Gnomon

I haven't read it, but from what you quote it's almost certainly literal. Panpsychists literally think that, in some sense or other, everything is conscious.

Many thanks fdrake. That looks like a very interesting paper. I'll process it and reply. Hopefully soon.

If pressed, the best I can say is there is thinking. — Tom Storm

Identity aside, we can be sure that there is consciousness. I don't particularly like Descartes' formulation.

Common sense - which may be more useful than philosophy - tells me I am conscious. But so what? — Tom Storm

It's a datum that must be accounted for in any complete worldview. Hence the hard problem. How do we fit it in? Can we start with structure and function and get consciousness out of that? If not, what do we do? Do we have to add it into the starting conditions? That's typically the panpsychist position.

Interested in why you strongly disagree with consciousness being a cluster concept. There seem to be a lot of types of conscious states that have radically different qualities, but we'd call all of them conscious. That to me connotes approaching the idea as a fuzzy unity of overlapping things, which can be disambiguated as needed based on the context. In my mind that's a cluster concept. — fdrake

It would be a cluster concept if none of those 'types of conscious states' had one essential defining feature. But they do. They're all phenomenally conscious in the sense that there's something it is like to be in them. That said, if one of them doesn't have the the feature of phenomenal consciousness (say, a robot (or zombie or whatever) creating a model of the world it can use to make predictions 'in the dark'), then it's not a conscious state in that sense. Phenomenal consciousness picks out exactly one feature/property and one feature only, the presence of which is essential to the definition. That sense of 'consciousness' isn't a cluster concept.

Yes, I think consciousness is present in deep sleep. But:

Because if we completely lacked consciousness, then loud noises would not wake us up. — Art48

I don't think that's persuasive. The objcetion would presumably be that the brain remains receptive to some stimuli, and then on receipt of something sufficiently significant then more processes are started up.

A: Consider first when we have local anesthesia, as when the dentist does a root canal. It is obvious that we are conscious. We do not feel the pain because the anesthesia prevents the pain signals from reaching consciousness. It’s possible when under a general anesthesia during surgery, the situation is the same: consciousness is present but the pain signals (as well as loud noises) are not reaching consciousness. — Art48

That's interesting. I hadn't considered that before.

My own current view is that consciousness is always present, but psychological identity perhaps isn't. During deep sleep there are no memories, values, desires etc. The patient ceases to exist as a psychological entity. That might be consistent with your second point, I'm not sure. What I think can't happen is that consciousness 'turns off' (like a computer shutting down) and then boots up again. That would entail consciousness being a vague concept, and I don't think it is.

I'd guess the following style of inference would work for it:

"What behaviours must an entity exhibit that renders consciousness the most plausible explanation for them?"

That's an ampliative inference - fallible, non-deductive. Sometimes called inference to the best explanation. — fdrake

Yes, I agree in general. However I wasn't asked for arguments, I was asked for evidence, and that's what I want this thread to be primarily about. And it may be a short thread as a result. Regarding the substantive issues about the nature of consciousness, arguments and analysis do a hell of a lot more useful work than evidence does.

Anyway, from the responses I'm not sure there's much of an issue. It does seem like we need definitions and theories in order to determine what we admit as evidence.

Can you give me an example of theory neutral evidence? — Tom Storm

I'm not sure I can. There may be no such thing, unless it is the world at large, which any true theory must be consistent with. Thoughts on this are very welcome. The one bit of theory neutral-evidence I can think of is exactly related to consciousness, and that is the insight that I am conscious. That thought has minimal content. The more complex the observation, or perception about the world, the more theory-laden it becomes, perhaps. For example, observing condensation on a window is theory-laden. Even observing water on the inside of a window is theory-laden - you're assuming it's water.

So perhaps the punchline here is: we should allow theory-laden evidence. It's no problem. So if I say the evidence for panpsychism is anything at all happening, that's OK. I haven't done an illegal move. But that evidence is not at all persuasive, as it is prima-facie consistent with non-panpsychist views as well. What a panpsychist needs is not evidence of panpsychism, there's an overabundance of that, but a priori reasons for taking panpsychism seriously as a theoretical competitor with more popular theories that also purport to explain the same body of evidence. And arguments are indeed what panpsychists offer. When justifying their view panpsychists make arguments, they don't say "There is no matter that isn't doing something, therefore panpsychism." They make arguments such as the argument from the non-vagueness of consciousness, or the argument from parsimony, or the argument from idealism, or whatever.

Further, no behaviour strictly entails any internal state absent a background theory which fills in the gaps. — fdrake

Yes, that seems right.

the concept is likely a cluster concept (also see here). — fdrake

I strongly disagree with this! Or at least, if this is true, we as philosophers of consciousness are fucked. Cluster-fucked you might say. It seems clear to me that consciousness is not a single cluster concept, but one word with several distinct meanings. A topic in itself perhaps and well worth a thread if someone can be arsed.

In short, we would need to arrive at a minimum criterion for what counts as consciousness, such that any and all candidates under consideration which meet that minimum criterion could be sensibly called "conscious"... — creativesoul

Right. That's pretty much the conclusion I came to, I think. So we need a definition, or theory, to guide what we are looking for. And then the stuff we find when looking constitutes evidence. Is that right?

So to take your "The ability to draw meaningful correlations between different things," I think is your definition/concept/theory of consciousness. And then if something, say ChatGPT, appears to draw meaningful correlations between things, then that is evidence that it is conscious. Am I following you?

Thank you for trying to tackle the question directly.

How do you think these 8 points sit with identifying panpsychism? — Tom Storm

Oh it's a disaster for panpsychism!

Great post from fdrake though, many thanks.

Now I guess you're going to show us how what we experience as awareness can be observed in rocks. — T Clark

Unfortunately not! If it were that easy the philosophy of mind would be over long ago. But we (perhaps) infer consciousness in other humans from their behaviour. But rocks also exhibit behaviour. It's not clear to me why the behaviour of rocks should not also evidence of consciousness.

Not being a panpsychist, looking for consciousness in inanimate objects is not something I would normally do, but since you brought it up... It seems clear to me the idea of consciousness originated to refer to a human mental process. — T Clark

Maybe, but even that sentence is theory-laden. It's stipulating it's a process. And I'm doubtful that earliest thinkers about consciousness did necessarily restrict it to human beings. If we're going to start somewhere, I suspect it's not processes in human beings - that's a way down the road. The starting point is my awareness. If I wasn't aware I wouldn't even suspect other people of being guilty of it.

I know that it's almost impossible to pin down a definition, but my current one I think is quite simple: The most fundamental unit of consciousness is a reflection of the outside from on the inside, and vice versa. There is an " in here" and an "out there". — Watchmaker

I quite like that. Is it a definition or a theory? if you were a lexicographer, would you consider writing that in your dictionary you are authoring?

Hmm. Is a TV crime drama a useful analogy? These are written and directed to highlight certain things about the suspects and manipulate an audience - false leads, clues and behaviours specifically filmed and constructed to take you in a direction. This is not like ordinary evidence, in is contrived to elicit a response. Maybe true crime would be a better analogy? Or maybe crime is not useful at all. Perhaps what you are saying can be made more simple - what are the key indicators of consciousness? How do we determine if something has consciousness? — Tom Storm

Well yes, I did wonder if my framing was not helpful. I gave it because I was specifically asked for "evidence". So I drew the first analogy that came to mind. Evidence appears in other contexts, but crime is the most obvious one. I shouldn't have framed it in terms of fiction, I should have stuck to real life to avoid your criticism about contrivance. True crime would be better, and that's really what I meant.

Broadly I guess it's a reframing of the problem of other minds, and possibly the problem of one's own mind as well.

I was going to write a different OP titled something like "Is there any theory-neutral evidence for consciousness?" but I thought that would narrow the discussion too much. But perhaps it would have been better. With murder, we have a fairly clear concept of what a murder is. That concept then determines what we admit as evidence. So, a bloody dagger found in a bush near a dead body may very well be the kind of thing that would be evidence of a murder. But an observation of a wobble of a star wouldn't be evidence of murder at all. However the observation of the wobble of a star might well be evidence of a planetary orbit, and the dagger is totally irrelevant. So what we admit as evidence is determined by a whole load of definition and theory. In the case of murder, a statutory definition (or common law depending on jurisdiction). For the wobbly star, there's a whole load of background theory that makes the wobble relevant. For example, we need a concept of gravity, and circular orbits, and mass, and the sky as having depth and not like a 2D firmament, etc etc.

But with consciousness, what do we use to determine what to admit as evidence? Do we look in dictionaries for definitions? Well, I think we should. That will help. But people typically don't do that, and that's really weird. They think definitions are up for grabs. They're not really, not unless we want to invent a technical term. And some definitions, like the Glasgow Coma Scale (thanks to @Banno) make the job really easy. It tells us exactly what to look for. But of course that doesn't capture the sense of 'consciousness' implicated in debates about subjective phenomenal experience. There are dictionary definitions of phenomenal consciousness, e.g.:

"the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world"

...there's lots of variations on the theme. And they tend to heavily employ synonyms, which is interestingly uninformative. Such definitions don't really help much when trying to decide what to admit as evidence. So with phenomenal consciousness, do we need to move beyond definition to theory to know what to admit as evidence? I rather think we do. Taking panpsychism for example, my view is that matter does what it does because of how it feels. Regardless of the truth of that, it does provide a criterion for determining what to admit as evidence. Is that stone conscious? Well, is it doing something? Yes, it's energy-matter behaving in a rockish-way. That action is evidence of its consciousness, but only if we assume panpsychism first! But that's no good is it? When @apokrisis and @180 Proof ask me for evidence, what they want is evidence that doesn't pre-suppose panpsychism! They want a reason to believe it that doesn't pre-suppose it. Similarly, if we look for the presence of brains as evidence of consciousness, that assumes a theory, namely that consciousness has something critical to do with brains. So that led me to try to think of evidence that doesn't pre-suppose any theory at all. And the only single piece of evidence that did not imply a whole load of argument and theory, was the fact that I am conscious. I know I am, regardless of any theoretical commitments (and I know some will question even that).

So, with regard to a rock and another human being, is there any theory neutral evidence to be had?

@fdrake
@Michael

So it's possible there are things our senses and devices can't perceive that are the foundation of this imperceptible macro-characteristic. It makes sense that we can't perceive the micro-properties. — Patterner

Righto, OK, thanks. That sounds like you are open to the possibility of panpsychism. Is that right? It also sounds like you might be a mysterian like McGinn, perhaps: the idea that we can never know exactly how physical processes cause or constitute consciousness, while nevertheless accepting that they do.

Define experience in a way that could break out of your hermeneutic circle. — apokrisis

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. In any case it's not my job to define 'experience' by fiat. The definition, or concept of consciousness, I take to be a given. One place it is given is in dictionaries. The definition is not up to us. Philosophers can attempt to refine and clarify a little perhaps, if a dictionary definition is not quite clear enough or we want to isolate a particular sense, but basically the definition of consciousness is public property. I think "the capacity to have experiences" captures the relevant sense fairly well.

If you want to define the word differently, please go ahead, but then we may not end up talking about the same thing.

What are its measurables from the microphysicalist perspective you want to take as a Panpsychist? — apokrisis

What is the 'it' you are referring to? Experience? I'm not a microphysicalist. I'm not sure exactly what you are asking.

What useful role does consciousness play outside of “experiencing”? In what sense is it causal precisely?

That's a good question. I'm not sure, but I'm considering the possibility that all causation is psychological, or at least reducible to the psychological. So the difference that consciousness makes is that without it, nothing would happen at all. I've been meaning to start a thread about that for a while to think it through, but haven't got to it.

Consciousness is the capacity to experience. A model of the world used to make predictions is a model of the world used to make predictions. The one isn't the other. They're conceptually distinct.

But the model isn't consciousness

Hence — apokrisis

Hence!

He's saying a whole lot more than that. But the cell as a self-defining self, as membrane and contents seems to be the beginning of that caring that gives meaning to anything. Cells have attitude! From that plus many more layers comes the predictive model that includes a self-model that becomes human consciousness — unenlightened

Yes, that's what I understand Apo to have been saying for a while. I have no particular objection to that narrative as the origin of a complex self that starts to resemble some of the mental faculties of humans. I just don't think it helps getting from non-consciousness to consciousness. As I said, I think there is an important distinction between the self and consciousness.

I think that's a very interesting point, and I think we've talked about it before. It may well be that a change that matters is a necessary condition for a conscious system to undergo an experience. That seems intuitively very plausible. If that's all Apo is saying then I agree, probably.

The usual assertions sans support. — apokrisis

I've set out my own views numerous times on the forums over the years, but I'll do so again at some point if you really want me to. I'm also aware that both you and 180 have asked me what evidence I have for, say, a rock to be conscious. That's of course a perfectly good question and I haven't answered it yet. Starting a thread is a considerable commitment for me, so I can't do it too often. My next one may well be on evidence for consciousness, and the criteria for admission as evidence, and whether that criterion is necessarily theory-laden. It'd be interesting to get your views on that. It's way easier to do brief criticisms and questions about other people's views than set out one's own. Probably a bit anti-social, but I think that's inevitable for this kind of format to an extent.

How do you define consciousness? — ssu

The capacity to experience.

Is a baby infant conscious?

Yes

Is a chimpanzee?

Yes

A spider?

Yes

An amoeba?

Yes

If you assume that it's exactly on/off, then what is the switch that has to be on?

The existence/non-existence switch. Or the something/nothing switch. I'm a panpsychist.

Nice analysis Mr Apokrisis! — Janus

Could you explain Apo's point to me?

So now you have to give a good counterfactual reason for why it wouldn't "feel like something" to be modelling the world from a point of view. Where is the scope for reasoned doubt. — apokrisis

It does feel like something to do that, but not because doing that peculiarly necessitates feeling like something. It feels like something because panpsychism is true.

The reason it feels like something to be conscious is that we are busy modelling the world - a world in which our self is the enactive anchor of that model. — apokrisis

The self isn't consciousness. Again, why can't this self-anchored modelling happen without consciousness?

A cone cell switches on when it exposed to dominantly “red” spectrum, and then signals the opposite when exposed to dominantly “green” spectrum. A neural correlation for reported experience is available in a way that makes complete explanatory sense. — apokrisis

But why is any experience at all correlated with that? Why can't that happen without an experience with it?

No! But it's an interesting question.

Consciousness seems obviously something that gradually increases and there isn't this one thing, one detail that switches consciousness on or off like a switch. — ssu

It seems to me that consciousness, conceptually, is exactly something on/off. Something either has experiences or it doesn't, I don't see a middle ground. A middle ground just doesn't fit the concept.

I'm just confused by the statement that "there is something it is like to be such-and-such". It refers to the same thing too many times for me. There is something (the football) it (the football) is like to be the football (the football). It can be applied to literally anything, is all I'm saying. — NOS4A2

Yeah I see, the meaning of the figure of speech is opaque to some, and unhelpful in getting the concept across sometimes.

There is something it is like to be a football. — NOS4A2

What is it like to be a football? What are you thinking of? Round (or oval if you're a septic), inflatable, ect? Is that what you mean?

To be clear, if I had a pill that would stop you being autistic, I would give it to you. I have no problem at all with you disliking it and I hope you can find some way to stop being it. But I'm against such a pill being available to the general population. That would mean the end of autism. My son would be in the last generation. Parents would give it to their autistic children en masse.

Yes you can. Not really hitting it out of the park huh. — Darkneos

Well, sort of. You could maybe develop a medication or surgery or something that turn people from being autistic to neurotypical, but such a thing could only correctly be called a 'cure' by people like you who conceive of autism as a disease. Neurodivergence is generally not conceived that way, so 'cure' would be the wrong word. Unless you want to say that you could 'cure' bipedalism by hacking someone's leg off.

the problem is that people seem to forget this can manifest in many ways and while some have the good traits and minimal bad down have nothing but bad and struggle needlessly. — Darkneos

What are you calling good traits? Can you list a few? And the bad? Can you list a few of those? Just so I know what you mean.

There are autistic people who struggle a lot, and are extremely disabled, and yet would not choose to take the cure pill. There are, no doubt, autistic people who are not especially disabled, who nevertheless would take the cure pill, just to fit in better. I'm just making the point that there is no necessary connection between having a shitty time and wanting not to be autistic. I haven't done a survey, and it would be interesting and informative to do one (maybe someone has), but I'm pretty sure autistic people who don't want to be autistic are in a minority. But I could be wrong. I suspect you are doubly-marginalised unfortunately, being a minority of a minority.

The "you would be a different person" argument isn't valid. We change over time, no one is the same person they were when they were a teen or a kid etc, so his argument in there about wishing their kid was dead by not having autism could literally apply to ANYONE who changes something about themselves in a manner that isn't recognized. — Darkneos

Yes, and it's bad when it does. Children grow up in ways their parents don't like, and parents disown them. My mum thought I was fab until I grew up and got a job as a labourer. Then she thought I was a useless failure. She had expectations of me that did not align with my own. I'm not clear what your point is. You seem to be agreeing with Sinclair.

IMO it's not a positive message — Darkneos

Not to you, clearly. But many people have found it extremely helpful.

They treat everyone's case as the same when it's not, — Darkneos

He's speaking to a group of parents, not an autistic individual. It's critically important, sans a 'cure', for parents to not think their kids are crap versions of neurotypicals, rather than perfectly good specimens of autistic people. Even if that's false (which it isn't), it will result in better outcomes for the kid.

I'm sick of being told to change my attitude as if they know what I've had to deal with. — Darkneos

What have you had to deal with? This?

Always being on the outside when it came to social interactions, never being able to read into things like others do, rigid thinking, etc, etc. — Darkneos

Well, that is the same for all autistic people! What you've said so far seems to be entirely autistic-normal, it's pretty much the defining characteristics. The difference, as you say, seems to be that you don't find any positives about being autistic, whereas many other autistic people do. So is that what you mean when you say "What you've had to deal with"? Is it not feeling anything positive about your autism?