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
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.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
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. — Unseen
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? — Possibility
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. — Unseen
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
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
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
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
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
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
I'm simply saying that beliefs about consciousness in any entity other than ourselves are, by necessity, assumptions — ChrisH
I'm telling you what i meant. Nobody else can do that. Not even you. LOL — Unseen
I know it with about the same certainty as I know that I'm not writing from the surface of the moon. — Unseen
Assumptions can be justified. — Unseen
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
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
I don't believe free will is possible, so what sort of will are you talking about and how does it work? — Unseen
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
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
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
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
Can I play?
— creativesoul
Do. — Unseen
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