Later, I make a distinction for philosophical purposes between 'awareness' and 'consciousness' exactly for the purpose of clarifying the difference between human and animal. This is a stipulated distinction and not a matter of common usage. I am exactly not claiming that dogs are aware of being aware, but merely that they are aware, when they aren't in common parlance 'unconscious'. — unenlightened

Are you sure that dogs are aware rather than just conscious? If by "awareness" you mean they possess qualia - i.e. they not only detect a particular shade of grey (dogs may not be the best animal for this) but are also aware they are detecting it, there is no evidence for that or reason to suspect it beyond anthropomorphism. There is no evidence that non-human animals possess qualia, which seems to render them, by your definition, unaware.

Searle already answered this question. Even if the robot can seemingly 'display' consciousness, it only a syntactic display of consciousness lacking and semantic understanding as shown in the 'china room' theory — Jamesk

A couple of problems with Searle's Chinese Rooom are that it is unphysical - i.e. it cannot in reality be performed, and that it is not computationally universal - i.e. it is irrelevant.

Are you sure that dogs are aware rather than just conscious? If by "awareness" you mean they possess qualia - i.e. they not only detect a particular shade of grey (dogs may not be the best animal for this) but are also aware they are detecting it, there is no evidence for that or reason to suspect it beyond anthropomorphism. There is no evidence that non-human animals possess qualia, which seems to render them, by your definition, unaware. — tom

I don't remember mentioning qualia. I did say that I regarded consciousness in the full human sense to be being aware of being aware. This surely makes clear that I am using awareness simple as a precursor to human consciousness. So I am saying with some sureness, but not infallibly that dogs are at least aware, but not necessarily conscious, i.e. not necessarily aware of being aware.

And now we have to talk about evidence again. Anything whatsoever that is evident to me is, if the term means anything, conveyed through my qualia. My qualia are my evidence but they cannot be evidence of your qualia, let alone a dog's.

So the evidence of awareness of others can only be behavioural, which surely is the point of your robot trick. Dogs behave like people in so far as they go to sleep and wake up, they get excited and frightened, and so on. And they die. So I can distinguish between a dead dog, an unconscious dog, and wakeful dog with a degree of confidence except at the margins. Awareness shows itself behaviourally as responsiveness to the environment; that is the only possible evidence.

Let's talk about the Turing test. There are robot cars these days that are responsive in an intelligent way to the environment. Like a well trained sheepdog, they go where you tell them to and adapt on the way to the circumstances. But they fail the Turing test as soon as you let them off the lead.

The best way to conduct a Turing test is to refuse to say in advance what it will be, because as soon as one tells the programmer, he can program the appropriate response. So I have given away my secret here, but there are plenty of others...

The best way to conduct a Turing test is to refuse to say in advance what it will be, because as soon as one tells the programmer, he can program the appropriate response. So I have given away my secret here, but there are plenty of others... — unenlightened

Is the Turing test a test for the subjective experience that (hopefully) we all agree determines and defines consciousness? Or is it a measure of whether or not some AI can fool people with its behaviors?

There is still the question of simulation vs the "real thing."

There is still the question of simulation vs the "real thing." — anonymous66

You are simulating well enough to fool me. ;)

It's a test for responsiveness, and that is all you ever have. All you have are my posts; I hope they are sufficient to convince you that I am conscious some of the time, because I cannot offer you my subjectivity. Turing is saying that if you cannot tell the difference between a person and a program, then it is unreasonable to claim there is a difference.

And now we have to talk about evidence again. Anything whatsoever that is evident to me is, if the term means anything, conveyed through my qualia. My qualia are my evidence but they cannot be evidence of your qualia, let alone a dog's. — unenlightened

There is clear evidence that other humans possess qualia, the most striking of which is the creation of scientific and other knowledge, also art and culture. At a more mundane level, human meme transfer requires qualia. We extract the rule, the meaning from a message, and discard the sequence of actions that comprise the message.

On the contrary, we know from animal studies that they do not extract meaning from actions, but simply behaviour-parse. Here's a wealth of information on animal learning!

The 2003 classic "Byrne, R W (2003) Imitation as behaviour parsing" is the one to read.

Animals do not create knowledge, but exist entirely within the constraints of their genetic programming.

Is the Turing test a test for the subjective experience that (hopefully) we all agree determines consciousness? Or is it a measure of whether or not some AI can fool people with its behaviors? — anonymous66

The cognitive aspects of an artificial general intelligence cannot be tested for simply behaviorally i.e. via its inputs and outputs.

The ability to form a semantic conception from syntactic actions must be the measure for intelligence / awareness / consciousness. Sheep have some intelligence, and awareness even be a 'dim' one, Humans display the highest known level of intelligence that leads to a high level of conceptual self awareness that separates us from the rest of the animals.

Even if our brains do function on some level in similar ways to other species or computers, what separates us is this ability to learn seemingly without boundaries.

Also talking about concepts such as artificial intelligence, hallucinations and zombies as if they are real doesn't help us to make progress with the mind. I know that this view will not be popular here.

Humans display the highest known level of intelligence that leads to a high level of conceptual self awareness that separates us from the rest of the animals. — Jamesk

But it can't be simply that intelligence leads to self awareness, or computers would be self aware, groups of people qua groups would be self aware, and clever animals would also be self-aware.

Even if our brains do function on some level in similar ways to other species or computers, what separates us is this ability to learn seemingly without boundaries. — Jamesk

But computers and animals don't create knowledge. To create knowledge, you need to be self-aware.

Animals do not create knowledge, but exist entirely within the constraints of their genetic programming. — tom

This is quite untrue; as your own reference states:

"Socially mediated traditions of behaviour, although known in many species of animal (see, for example, Galef 1980, 1990; Roper 1983; Terkel 1994; Reader & Laland 2000; Rendell & Whitehead 2001), are particularly striking in the chimpanzee Pan troglodytes (Whiten et al. 1999), and the variation among the tools made and used by different chimpanzee populations is so rich that it has been studied as ‘material culture’ (McGrew 1992)."

This translates as know-how transmitted socially and not genetically.

I also came across this:

"Dogs are able to follow pointing by head and eyes, or by hand, even if the hand is opposite to the side on which the target lies — ‘crossed pointing’ — and even if the hand remains stationary or the human moves in a direction opposite to their pointing. These impressive abilities raise two questions. Firstly, is this a special-purpose skill or part of a complex of abilities with wider implications? In humans, pointing and gaze-following have been causally linked to reference, one of the fundamentals of language [1]; moreover, pointing and gaze following are generally seen as part of a suite of abilities that together confer ‘theory of mind’ [2]. Nothing in the normal behaviour of dogs gives convincing evidence of any canine ability to understand mental states, let alone reference."
Animal Communication: What Makes a Dog Able to Understand its Master?Richard W. Byrne

That dogs do not have a theory of mind goes very well with my earlier suggestion that they are aware, but not aware of being aware. I won't expound further on the connection between a theory of mind and self awareness, but I think it is a close connection.

But it can't be simply that intelligence leads to self awareness, or computers would be self aware... — Tom

Computers aren't intelligent. They can model aspects of intelligence, but they're devices, they're not beings; they're large arrays of switches. A computer is no different in essence from a very sophisticated abacus. I don't think your intepretation of 'qualia' is correct, either. That awkward bit of pseudo-philosophical jargon simply refers to the qualitative aspect of experience - what experience 'feels like", or how it manifests subjectively. While obviouslly we can't see things ffrom a dog's point of view, I think it is implausible to deny that dogs are subjects of experience. Whereas I deny outright that computers are subjects of experience. If I put an axe through the iMac I'm typing this post on, it would be a great inconvenience for me, but it wouldn't warrant compassion for the iMac. Whereas if I yell at my dog to stop following me from room to room, he doesn't like it. There's your 'qualia' ;) .

I am interested in the self-awareness aspect of consciousness as it appears in animals as disperse as elephants, apes, corvids & dogs.

It is somewhat surprising that dog's and perhaps some other animal don't appear to have self consciousness, however, this may be due to how we test for self-awareness.

A recent study took dogs pee and posted it up on a wall in an enclosed room, then let each dog who had peed enter the room. The dogs all sniffed and sniffed the other dog's pee, didn't bother with their own pee.

Perhaps a dog's consciousness favors scent over its other senses and it is self-aware, just not how we think about self-awareness.

Also, covids,with a little brain about 20 grams can use tools, & figure out simple analogical puzzles, perhaps suggesting that perception itself contains structural information already embedded.

I feel like idealism might have some substance behind it, but it seems to fail to account for accidents, as well as the experience of discovering something new.

Other than idealism, property dualism (a la Spinoza) is one of the better positions imo. In certain formulations it might seem like panpsychism; for example we could theorize that the mental is merely a relationship between two material objects. The experience of red is the secondary quality that derives its existence from the relationship between the perceiving subject and the object reflecting radiation.

I don't really understand Aristotle's psychology, maybe that has something to it.

This translates as know-how transmitted socially and not genetically. — unenlightened

Yes, the paper is called "Imitation as behaviour parsing" for a reason. Behaviours are transmitted between apes without understanding or intentionality. There is a set of behaviour primitives from which apes construct complex behaviours. Apes cannot learn new primitives as that would require the creation of knowledge that is not in their genome.

A couple of examples are that apes can pick up a stone, but they cannot orient the stone. They also cannot follow pointing, which dogs can.

Humans are not constrained in this way, obviously.

Searle says that humans have the unique ability of being able to lie, some animals can deceive but cannot lie. I am not sure if I understand properly the difference between deception and untruths in this case.

I had a dog that would shiver violently when left outside in the winter. It would show me that it was cold and wanted to come in by shivering. However when the summer came along and it was warm outside, but the dog wanted to come in anyway, it would pretend to be cold by violently shivering, even though it wasn't cold. Whether this was a deception or a lie it still shows an admirable level of intelligence in manipulation.

We simply do not understand enough about intelligence to give conclusive theories.

My own view is that everything resembles the original creative impetus of the Big Bang and the human mind and brain are actually creative engines, hence, the reason they've driven all the psychologists, philosophers, physicists, and neurologists nuts. While reliability is great, creativity is more important in a universe of unceasing change explaining, for example, why the human brain has a theoretical memory storage capacity of over a petabyte, yet, human memory is notoriously fallible. This also fits in with mathematical examinations of evolution which have concluded that its about staying two steps ahead of the competition in guessing the punch lines coming, yet, evolutionary advances require generosity.

One difference between a manipulative statement and a lie is that the former can be true (e.g. selective and misleading), whereas a lie is never true. Perhaps the dog was truly feeling cold despite the temperature...

How would I describe consciousness?

I would argue that consciousness is the presence of a world.

Metzinger has some interesting thoughts on this:

For minimal consciousness:

• Constraint 1: Globality - consciousness is globally available for many different functions
• Constraint 2: Presentationality - consciousness implies presence, or an experience of "now"-ness
• Constraint 3: Transparency - a phenomenological concept that implies epistemic darkness, or an inability to explore the roots of consciousness itself by consciousness alone. I would personally call this "limited flexibility", or what Metzinger calls "autoepistemic closure".

For a robust sense of self:

• Substantiality - the feeling that one could exist all by oneself, see Avicenna's "floating man" thought experiment.
• Essence - the perception that one possesses an "innermost core" of essential, unchanging properties
• Individuality - the feeling that one has a unique personal psychological identity.

For a more robust consciousness:

• Constraint 4: Covolved Holism - i.e. "nested" structures-within-structures (pace Salthe)
• Constraint 5: Dynamicity - change and duration, existing within the background of presence (constraint 2)
• Constraint 6: Perspectivalness, or the relationship between a stable "self" and a stable "environment"

There are more constraints and much more detail in the link above. It's a great example of modern neuro-phenomenology.

What is consciousness ? Is it something else then the content of your mind ?

Is it not your memories, your suffering, your agony, your experiences, your relationships ( at least what you call a relationship ). Is consciousness not an attribute of the mind? Does it exist by itself with no mind to hold it? Did thought created the psychological structure of " ME ?
So is thought the building block of consciousness ?
If so, is it not material?

What about neutral monism? For Example:

• there is only one kind of substance (consciousness)
• it is distributed in atomic parts (for example elementary particles)
• atomic parts are individual conscious being
• atomic parts do interact producing conscious experiences on each other
• atomic parts have volition and perform actions in strightforward ways according to what they feel (which in turn is determined by what kind of interactions they are having with each other)
• the statistical behaviour of large numbers of atoms produces apparently deterministic or probabilistic behaviours that follow some "laws of physics"

I can dismiss Searle because his view requires naive realism- and that is demonstrably false — anonymous66

LOL

The awareness of a being to it's essential presence in existance.

Consciousness is a biological phenomenon, it arises from conditions of satisfaction such as a brain and things to be conscious of. So, I would describe it as such.

Consciousness is a biological phenomenon, it arises from conditions of satisfaction such as a brain and things to be conscious of. So, I would describe it as such. — jkop

What is a "brain"? "Brain" is a term we use to describe a very broad class of information-processing structures build up with a network of neurons, sometimes we also speak of "electronic brains" and we also have artificial "neural networks" (which are non-biological) but we don't have a precise definition of what should be considered brain and what should not.

Your questioning of 'brain' is unwarranted, I write 'biological', recall, and brains are literally biological. You can't get more precise than that. Electronic devices are called "brains" metaphorically under the assumption that they would share behavioural or functional characteristics with biological brains. But that assumption is controversial, and the 'brains' in 'electronic brains' is far more imprecise since we don't know whether electronic devices could be conscious at all. We know, without doubt, that literal brains can be conscious.

The crucial point to recognise regarding the phenomenon of our most irreducable experience - that of our consciousness itself - is that, uniquely, it is a non-sensory experience - capable in principle of being undergone in a state where all of the five interactive senses are negated. The significance of this fact consists in the consequence that our experience of consciousness is inimical to the method of scientific description, capable soley of describing our sensory perception of material interaction, from which the palpable inadequacy of scientific attempts at its description descends.
It requires to be recognised that this specific reason renders an adequate description of the phenomenon of consciousness in principle beyond the capacity ot the human mind. You may pile the sophistication of scientific argument, ex: Quantum physic scientific methodology, as high as your capacity to comprehend compexity permits, but it will not thereby advance your argument a single nanometre accross the chasm existing between the manifeststion of sensory and non-sensory phenomena - the sophistication on the one hand of scientific argument and its demonstrable inadequacy on the other perhaps ironically serving thereby merely to emphasise the point! - You might as fruitfully attempt employing the scientific method to envisage a fourth primary colour!

Brain" is a term we use to describe a very broad class of information-processing structures build up with a network of neurons, sometimes we also speak of "electronic brains" and we also have artificial "neural networks" (which are non-biological) but we don't have a precise definition of what should be considered brain and what should not. — Babbeus

If you wish to apply computer science terms to a biological organ that shares some similarities with computing devices, then okay, I guess. Lots of people seem to want to do that. I don't think the brain is a computer, network or information processor, those are just the best technological metaphors we can come up with.

What is a "brain"? — Babbeus

Ask and you shall receive:

.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain

Your questioning of 'brain' is unwarranted, I write 'biological', recall, and brains are literally biological. You can't get more precise than that. — jkop

If someone whould have told me that "soul can exist only inside humans" I would have asked what is a human. The same I do when someone says that "consciousness can exist only with brains". Concept like "humans", "brains" or "chickens" are not philosophically well founded: they are just fuzzy patterns with undefined boundaries. There is a sequence of organism that starts from unicellular ones and ends with human beings, where each member of the sequence is the father of the following member. Which is the point where the members of the sequence actually start to be "human"? When do they start to have a "brain"? What is there that actually "trigger" the consciousness that didn't exist before?

What terms referring to "everyday objects in the world"/"natural kinds" are not "fuzzy patterns with undefined boundaries" in your view? Give an example of a few of those.