The scientific record doesn't support a theory of higher and lower order rocks where marble, for example, can be shown to have ancient granite ancestors. Much of this has to do with rocks not being able to reproduce, much less actually having DNA.

Rocks don't process information in any literal way. This conversation remains ridiculous regardless of how much you wish to stubbornly maintain it. — Hanover

LOL - I probably asked for that one. FWIW, I don’t believe a rock as such is conscious, neither do I believe it can evolve.

By evolution, I don’t mean Darwin’s theory of ‘chance’ variation and the limitations imposed by natural selection, either. I mean a gradual development of information systems from non-living matter (eg. Carbon) to chemical processes, to biochemical processes, to biology and to humanity. I could substitute ‘carbon atom’ for ‘rock particle’, but the only relevant difference is in our perception of their potential for life.

My particular train of thought developed mainly after reading Carlo Rovelli’s “Reality is Not What it Seems’, and in particular Chapter 12: Information.

It’s not really worth defining interaction as an experience on the part of a rock particle - I’ll grant that. But to dismiss it as having nothing at all to do with consciousness is ignorance, in my opinion. You can quibble about my use of language that suggests panpsychism or personification of rocks or carbon atoms or amoeba, but that’s just fear talking, really. I personally maintain a largely materialist (as opposed to idealist) perspective in relation to consciousness.

This is the dualist's quandary: How does the conscious affect the body and vice versa. I don't think this should lead us to wonder whether rocks have a conscious. This is the flip side of the solipsist who wonders whether he's the only conscious being in the universe, where one wonders if everything has a conscious, including rocks. Both positions seems to involve a waste of thought. — Hanover

When we, at least in the past, in Western societies, granted consciousness we granted it along the lines of function, behavior. But we have no reason to assume that behavior and consciousness are tied together. Whatever consciousness rocks might have, rocks have very little behavior. Perhaps they have a kind of sleepy slow presence to themselves. Right now scientists are beginning to think that plants are conscious, despite lacking nervous systems. They make choices, who intelligence, solve problems, communicate, and have nervous system like reactions to stimulation - of course this all might happen with no experiencer if your default is that consciousness is the radial exception, which was how animal consciousness was rule out, within science, but not elsewhere, for so long. One need no be a dualist to think that what is, varies along a spectrum, and at one end of that spectrum or as one facet of what gets called matter is consciousness. The problem with materialism or physicalism is that matter isn't what we thought it was. We have extended the category matter now to things without mass, to fields, to 'things' in superposition, and this is not just at the microlevels. Some theists hang onto the dualism, without realizing that what now gets called matter includes things like neutrinos that are passing in their trillions trhough the earth as we speak. And the psychicalists keep using what they should realize is a dead metaphor that should be buried by calling themselves physicalists or saying that all is matter, since the set has expanded and this really just means 'stuff we think is real regardless of the properties.' But I think there is a desire to distinguish themselves from the theists, especially the Abrahamic ones, so this term gets used as if it carries a specific meaning.

I have never said that my belief that I'm conscious is an assumption. I know I'm conscious because I'm having experiences, which is consciousness as I'm speaking of it.

I don't believe free will is possible, so what sort of will are you talking about and how does it work?
— Unseen

I am fairly certain you have direct experience of free will. It's what you experience when you act.

Assumptions can be quite logical and rational. I assume there's no hippopotamus in my coat closet for rational and logical reasons. I just looked in my closet and showed that it IS possible to prove a negative.
— Unseen

But only for empirical questions and only because the proof is itself based on assumptions. — Echarmion

Freedom in the sense of lack of constraints, even combined with a sensation of being free, is no proof of free will, for all of that is the product of a brain operating under the same deterministic rules as everything else in the universe (above the subatomic scale, where randomness seems to rule). Experiences are helpless to rescue free will.

My arguments don't rely on assumptions. They argue against the notion that consciousness is somehow necessary which appears to be merely an assumption without factual foundation.

You're confusing "sense" with "stimulus." Senses, as humans understand them, are faculties that one has at least the capability of being conscious of (should the pre-conscious mind choose to send them on to the conscious mind)

I have never said that my belief that I'm conscious is an assumption. — Unseen

I thought you did:

The OP is a question; WHY are we conscious and the only assumption embodied in it is that we ARE conscious. Of course, maybe we're not. — Unseen

Freedom in the sense of lack of constraints, even combined with a sensation of being free, is no proof of free will, for all of that is the product of a brain operating under the same deterministic rules as everything else in the universe (above the subatomic scale, where randomness seems to rule). Experiences are helpless to rescue free will. — Unseen

The point is that you know what free will is, because you experience it. You can claim that this experience is an illusion, but we know what free will is just as we know what consciousness is.

You're confusing "sense" with "stimulus." Senses, as humans understand them, are faculties that one has at least the capability of being conscious of (should the pre-conscious mind choose to send them on to the conscious mind) — Unseen

‘As humans understand them’ - this is where your problem is. My definition of ‘sense’ is from the Oxford dictionary. Your anthropocentrism is getting in the way of your understanding of consciousness.

This takes me back to the query I had before: When you define ‘consciousness’ as ‘having experiences’, it seems like what you mean is ‘being aware that you are having experiences’, which in my view is a definition of self-awareness, NOT of consciousness.

Do you believe it is possible for consciousness to exist without self-awareness?

You're making a category error. I don't assume that I am conscious. I know that directly. I assume others are conscious, but admit that I may be wrong.

‘As humans understand them’ - this is where your problem is. My definition of ‘sense’ is from the Oxford dictionary. Your anthropocentrism is getting in the way of your understanding of consciousness.

This takes me back to the query I had before: When you define ‘consciousness’ as ‘having experiences’, it seems like what you mean is ‘being aware that you are having experiences’, which in my view is a definition of self-awareness, NOT of consciousness.

Do you believe it is possible for consciousness to exist without self-awareness? — Possibility

What does self-awareness consist of, factually? If I'm having experiences, they are given to me by my brain, my pre-conscious "mind." The only sense in which they are "mine" is that I'm experiencing them, but perhaps I'm being fed someone else's experiences or artificially-produced experiences.

The point is that you know what free will is, because you experience it. You can claim that this experience is an illusion, but we know what free will is just as we know what consciousness is. — Echarmion

I don't know what this "experience of free will" is. Sure, I raise my arm, but my brain knew I'd be doing that and set up the action before my awareness or experience. Was my brain free? How? I can't even plead lack of constraints, for it's constrained by the laws of physics.

I don't know what this "experience of free will" is. Sure, I raise my arm, but my brain knew I'd be doing that and set up the action before my awareness or experience. Was my brain free? How? I can't even plead lack of constraints, for it's constrained by the laws of physics. — Unseen

But you decide to raise your arm. Every time you make a decision, you experience yourself as free. Otherwise, making a decision would be impossible. You can only act at all by assuming that you have some degree of control over your actions.

You're making a category error. I don't assume that I am conscious. I know that directly. I assume others are conscious, but admit that I may be wrong. — Unseen

Ok but you did say you assumed "we" are conscious not that others were conscious.

So it seems that you assume others are conscious but you are "certain" that some others (creatures) are not conscious. My point is that both these beliefs are assumptions (you have no unassumed evidence of consciousness/lack of consciousness in any human/creature).

Free will is a spook subject because you can live liberated or imprisoned. A measure of the free nature of will is surely, never one or the other, but some increment of both.

If I lose myself in thought, is it free will, or not because the process is automatic? Part of it is free, but part of it is that I can be trapped in thought process.

Free will regarding the experience doesn't at all reflect the activity of the experience, which is that will is opposed and free at times, and the reason it is this way is physical. Better called will than free will.

But you decide to raise your arm. Every time you make a decision, you experience yourself as free. Otherwise, making a decision would be impossible. You can only act at all by assuming that you have some degree of control over your actions. — Echarmion

Feeling free isn't BEING free. And while I, on the conscious level, FEEL free, I have no idea at all what my pre-conscious brain/mind feels. If, indeed, it feels anything. That part is beyond my direct experience.

So it seems that you assume others are conscious but you are "certain" that some others (creatures) are not conscious. My point is that both these beliefs are assumptions (you have no unassumed evidence of consciousness/lack of consciousness in any human/creature). — ChrisH

There's plenty of evidence--behavioral, structural, etc. It just doesn't support a conclusion that's certain (or proved--but that's a truism with empirical evidence period) and people fall back on that completely ignorant "either certainty or it's a stab-in-the-dark guess" dichotomy.

You're making a category error. I don't assume that I am conscious. I know that directly. I assume others are conscious, but admit that I may be wrong.
— Unseen

Ok but you did say you assumed "we" are conscious not that others were conscious.

So it seems that you assume others are conscious but you are "certain" that some others (creatures) are not conscious. My point is that both these beliefs are assumptions (you have no unassumed evidence of consciousness/lack of consciousness in any human/creature). — ChrisH

I'm telling you what i meant. Nobody else can do that. Not even you. LOL

Assumptions can be justified. We base assumptions on evidence. My cat seems conscious like me arguing from analogy to myself, which is how I assume others are conscious, too. By contrast, my coleus plant on the window sill seems alive but not to be experiencing anything. It wilts if I forget to water it, but that's hard to build an analogical argument for consciousness on. It seems about as conscious as the rock on the window sill next to it.

If I'm wrong about other people, I'm unique and alone in the world.

Where is your answer to the OP? WHY are we conscious?

What does self-awareness consist of, factually? If I'm having experiences, they are given to me by my brain, my pre-conscious "mind." The only sense in which they are "mine" is that I'm experiencing them, but perhaps I'm being fed someone else's experiences or artificially-produced experiences. — Unseen

Ok then - I’ll rephrase the question:

Given that an experience is defined as ‘practical contact with and observation of facts or events’ or ‘an event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone’, do you believe it is possible to have an experience without self-awareness?

There's plenty of evidence--behavioral, structural, etc. It just doesn't support a conclusion that's certain (or proved--but that's a truism with empirical evidence period) and people fall back on that completely ignorant "either certainty or it's a stab-in-the-dark guess" dichotomy. — Terrapin Station

"People" may fall back on that simplistic dichotomy but I'm not aware that I've fallen into that trap. I'm simply saying that beliefs about consciousness in any entity other than ourselves are, by necessity, assumptions. It's the Opening Poster who claims that some creatures are not conscious is a certainty and not an assumption.

I'm simply saying that beliefs about consciousness in any entity other than ourselves are, by necessity, assumptions — ChrisH

If "assumptions" can be things we believe on plenty of good evidence, though that seems like an unusual way to use that term.

I'm telling you what i meant. Nobody else can do that. Not even you. LOL — Unseen

Sure but I'm simply responding to your words. In your first response to my claim that your belief that some creatures are not conscious you replied:

I know it with about the same certainty as I know that I'm not writing from the surface of the moon. — Unseen

But you now seem to be saying that this belief is in fact an assumption that, in your mind, is justified:

Assumptions can be justified. — Unseen

Well of course they can! But this assumption is based on the complete absence of any concrete evidence of consciousness in any entity other than ourselves.

All I'm objecting to is your introduction of the notion that other (presumably non-human) evolutionarily successful creatures are non-conscious is a given. It's not. It's an assumption.

If "assumptions" can be things we believe on plenty of good evidence, though that seems like an unusual way to use that term. — Terrapin Station

If you think assumptions about consciousness in other creatures are based on "plenty of good evidence" when no one has any concrete evidence of consciousness in any entity other than ourselves, then we disagree about what constitutes "good" evidence.

Where is your answer to the OP? WHY are we conscious? — Unseen

Science shows us that consciousness is always temporally behind the times and experiments show that the brain has made the decision before the consciousness thinks it has made it. It follows from those things that the consciousness is merely an observer of brain activities. — Unseen

To be conscious is to be experiencing something — Unseen

...the consciousness has no direct connection without the world. Some degree of processing goes on before your consciousness is aware of anything. This is what I call the pre-consciousness. It processes the data and decides what to do with it, including what to give you as conscious awareness. — Unseen

Consciousness is helpless to do anything. All of our actual thinking (assessing, planning, reacting) goes on in the preconsciousness before we even become aware of it. — Unseen

Can I play?

I don't believe free will is possible, so what sort of will are you talking about and how does it work? — Unseen

The ability to self-move I think. Just as our own behaviour is determined by our values, thoughts and feelings, so is the behaviour of fundamental particles and fields is attributable to some kind of value and feeling.

I think this is a solution to the problem of under or over determination in macro-behaviour of creatures which everyone agrees have minds, such as humans. The problem is about deciding what determines behaviour. Do we tell a physical story about photons, retinas, neurons and synapses, adrenaline and motor responses? Or do we tell a story about seeing a lion, feeling fear and running away? Presumably both of these apply in some sense, but how are they compatible and what is their relationship? A panpsychist answer is that the physical is reducible to the psychological. All the particles and forces involved in the 'physical' story are doing what they are doing because of how they feel, and if they felt nothing they would not exist, because to exist is to behave in a persistent way for a while, and no such behaviour could happen without conscious will.

At such a fundamental level, there is no 'how' in terms of mechanism. Mechanism is a higher-level development in which conscious entities all doing their own thing interact in regular predictable ways, and these can then be manipulated. Consider that you could make a light switch out of thirsty human beings. Get a giant tray, pivoted in the centre. Put half a dozen people on the tray. Have electrical contacts under each end. Then put a bottle of water at one end of the tray. The thirsty humans move toward the water. The end they move to goes down and makes a contact. Then put the bottle of water at the other end, the humans move and the contact is broken. This switch would not work if the humans did not feel thirst and did not will to survive. And from an alien perspective, this might look like the mechanical movement of insentient particles obeying some kind of impersonal force. The panpsychist point I'm suggesting is that everything is like the human light-switch, only we don't realise it. When we look at the mechanical behaviour of relatively simple matter, we are like the aliens who don't realise that humans are conscious, and name regular behaviours in terms of impersonal laws. The panpsychist idea is that there are, in fact, no impersonal forces at all. All behaviour is ultimately, and most accurately, attributable to will.

I haven't argued for panpsychism here, I've just explicated (one version of) it a bit to try to answer your question.

EDIT: typos

But I just told you the evidence we have. What's the objection to it? (And the evidence had better not amount to it not being certain.)

But I just told you the evidence we have. What's the objection to it? (And the evidence had better not amount to it not being certain.) — Terrapin Station

I don't have any objection to it - I just don't think it's "good" evidence.

I assume that you agree that all our beliefs are supported by varying degrees of evidence (ranging from pretty tenuous to to pretty much cast iron). I just think that the evidence for any belief that "Some of the most successful creatures on the planet, in terms of survival, are not conscious." is more tenuous than cast iron.

Given that an experience is defined as ‘practical contact with and observation of facts or events’ or ‘an event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone’, do you believe it is possible to have an experience without self-awareness? — Possibility

For me, to be conscious is to be having experiences, and they are given to me by my pre-conscious mind. My brain. The only "contact" is the passive one in which the brain offers up an experience. In the case of conscious actions, the brain gives me the impression of both initiation and follow through.

All I'm objecting to is your introduction of the notion that other (presumably non-human) evolutionarily successful creatures are non-conscious is a given. It's not. It's an assumption. — ChrisH

Based on everything we know, it's a reasonable a justifiable assumption that amoeba can't have experience. I can't make assumptions on what I don't know.

I can't fight Cartesian skepticism. Maybe the truth is that the Evil Genius he invoked is feeding me lies, but based on what I know, amoebae are no more conscious than a rock.

Can I play? — creativesoul

Do.

I don't believe free will is possible, so what sort of will are you talking about and how does it work?
— Unseen

The ability to self-move I think. Just as our own behaviour is determined by our values, thoughts and feelings, so is the behaviour of fundamental particles and fields is attributable to some kind of value and feeling. — bert1

You may be new to this discussion, so you may not know that I don't respond to article-length bedsheet tracts. I'm responding to several others and I don't intend to let this forum take over my life.

So, if you have a point, make it again briefly and in plain language. Remember that Einstein once said "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."

Can I play?
— creativesoul

Do. — Unseen

So that we ensure that we're talking about the same thing here...

What is the criterion for consciousness such that when it is met by any and all candidates, those candidates and only those candidates are the ones sensibly said to have consciousness whereas any and all candidates that do not meet the criterion are likewise sensibly denied to have consciousness?

Your turn.