Religious/Philosophical Debate #2: Open to whomever signs up first

If you're interested in debating the following topic, please reply to this thread and say which side you want to debate. Note that this is a moderated forum and your post will not show up immediately. Also note that this is a 1 vs. 1 debate. It is acceptable to rank your preference as to which side you want to debate if you don't care.

What we call "consciousness" is merely a result of physical processes, bound completely by a chain of cause and effect.

First person to choose the affirmative gets it; first person to choose the negative gets the negative.

I'll take the affirmative.

I'll give negative a shot.

Alrighty. Pnoom!, please state your case.

Regardless of how brains came to be (whether through creation or evolution, or some combo of the two), that's what we have to study.

First we need a definition for consciousness. I wiki-ed it just to see what they said, and their definition seems like a fairly accurate base to go on. Here it is:

I think we can all agree that thoughts are a direct result of physical processes. Brain imaging studies have shown that when you think about different things, different parts of your brain are used more, clearly indicating that your brain is the cause of thoughts:

*I know wiki isn't the most trustworthy source, but it has generally proven accurate on specialized scientific topics where only experts know enough to actually discuss the topics in depth.

If we look at sensations, we're talking about touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smelling (there are other senses, too, though). Again, it's pretty well understood how each of these work. Touching an object triggers nerves, which send an electric signal to the brain giving information about the texture of the object. Smelling involves inhaling microscopic particles of objects (that are floating in the air), which your brain then analyzes. In sight, your eye takes in light (as reflected/emitted by objects around you) with its cones and rods, and, again, sends a signal to your brain. The other two are roughly the same.

This is a fairly clear case of cause and effect; your body takes in information, which it relays to the brain, allowing you to sense the world around you in a variety of manners.

Perceptions are essentially the same as sensations, it would seem to me, so no need to repeat myself.

Here it starts to get trickier, with dreams, moods, and a sense of self, and here is where I expect most of the debate to take place. Dreams are probably the easiest to explain, so I'll start with them. Eugene Asirinsky has proven that dreams do, in fact exist, though they are still not completely understood. There isn't yet a concensus on what causes dreaming, but it's often thought to revolve around long term memory during sleep. I will concede that it's impossible to know because it's so uncertain, but all of the theories I read about dreaming seem to imply a cause and effect relationship.

According to Robert Thayer, a well known (in the field) mood psychologist, moods are affected by many factors, including emotions and energy level. Mood is, then, a function of these variables, so changing the variables will change the mood, a clear cause and effect relationship. However, I also need to show that these variables are cause and effect. The example I will give is that walking has been shown to increase happiness, which has in turn been shown to put people in a better mood.

Finally, and most difficult, is the sense of self portion of consciousness. First off, it should be known that a sense of self is not solely present in humans. One common definition of self-awareness is that if you paint a dot on an animal's forehead and place it in front of a mirror, it will attempt to check out the dot. Great Apes and Dolphins pass this test. It has also been shown that Elephants recognize individuals and death, also suggesting self-awareness.

I argue that both of these tests show a correlation between high level brain function and self-awareness. As far as death goes, the self-awareness related to that comes from noticing that eventually all animals cease to exist, and drawing the conclusion of death. From that comes the inherent "what's before death", and from that we get the concept of life and a sense of self. Recognizing individuals is simply a matter of being able to remember all the detail of an animals sight/physical features and being able to distinguish. Once that has been established, a sense of self is not far off. If you recognize others as individuals, it is only logical to recognize yourself as an individual of the same species (and species recognition occurs way down the evolutionary line).

For the dot experiment, again, self-awareness becomes a logical conclusion. If you have the brain power to realize that the mirror shows what is facing it (a simple correlation of the picture in the mirror with the visual "picture" your eye provides you of your surroundings). If, then, you make this connection, and you see a creature whose movements imitate yours in the mirror, it is only logical to conclude that that creature is you. Then the "what the fuck is this dot doing on my forehead" factor kicks in and you try to explore the dot.

Frenchy, you may ask Pnoom! 3 questions.

-If a person was devoid (even blocked out by drugs) of all his sensory organs at birth, would that person still have consciousness, or is consciousness really reducible to the ability to be conscious of something outside one's self?


-When we do something like walking to better up our mood, does the act of walking bring our mood up in itself or does our mood go up because walking eases our mind and lets us (our consciousness) deal with whatever is bringing the mood down?


-Being able to perceive something outside one's self helps us to know what we are, but do we need that ability or capability to help us know that we are(whatever I am, I am something)?






Note: English isn't my first language, so if anything I say isn't clear enough, just let me know and I'll rephrase/rework it.

That would depend on how you define consciousness. Here's the definition I argued for:

Notice in particular the bolded statement, which suggests that it can include some but not all of those. For example, a fly has senses, but it likely does not have what we would call "consciousness."

There are two ways to go from here. In the first, the person truly has lost all senses, including touch. In this case, I don't think it's possible for the human to live with no external stimuli, so I don't think the question of consciousness applies.

Now, assuming that the human does have a sense of touch, that would allow him/her to develop a sense of self through the simple observation that if I touch some things, I only feel it in one area, but if I touch this one specific thing (his/her body), I feel it in two places.

Also, the sense of touch would allow (potentially) for reading braille, which might strengthen the sense of self, as well as the other requirements for consciousness.

I honestly don't know, and I don't know if specialists in the area know to this level of detail, though it would be fascinating to study.

The best guess I can make (though it's still a guess) is that it's a bit of both. From what I read in preparing my initial argument, external factors (like being laid off) can affect mood, but that mood also affects how you react to external factors. So walking, in increasing happiness, would likely increase mood on its own, which would then allow you to better deal with the external factors bringing down your mood, thus raising your mood even more.

This is speculation, though. If you want to ask another question instead, I'm fine with that.

I think that it's been fairly clearly shown that humans need a frame of reference. Things that are "big" are "big" compared to things that are "small," and what determines big or small depends on the average size of to what it's compared. That's just how we function. Even with good and evil.

The real question, then, is whether this frame of reference extends to a sense of self as well. I find it nearly impossible to imagine that a human could develop a sense of self without any knowledge of the outside environment (no senses, for example), because there’s no way to define yourself without referring to the outside environment (at least not as we currently understand it). Instead, to have some sense of self, you need to also have a sense of "something else," or else there is no basis for defining what "yourself" is.

On the other hand, if you could conclusively show that humans do, in fact, have a sense of self even when removed entirely from an outside environment, that would probably show that consciousness is not cause and effect based on physical laws. The problem is that this is inherently impossible to do.

Frenchy, you can now give your rebuttal.

Frenchy has informed me he needs time to work on his exams but will eventually get to this. I will PM Pnoom! when Frenchy's response is posted.

Like it can probably be seen already, one problem I have here is that the definition used is incomplete and is already prone to give out a materialistic approach to the subject. But even in the definition, when it says ''but which may involve'', it only tells us some of the components taken into account when discussing the subject, but it doesn't give us a set limit or possibility. Now with that put aside:

Self-consciousness is much like language. It is a inherent capability we have, but not an inherent attribut. It must be developped in order to be fulfilled. It is on it's own a "potentiality". Simply put, consciousness is a process which emerges from a chain of cause and effect, but once self-consciousness (not to be mistaken with self-awareness) is achieved, you can start building your own chain, if you will. You are still bound within the limits of reality obviously. You are a human, you will not be a dog in ten minutes, but as a human, capable of self-consciousness, you are able to grasp, after having stored a sufficient amount of sensory-deta, that you are able to choose what you do within the bounds of a set of possibilities defined by the previous actions. So you are not completely bound to a chain of cause and effect just by having a portion of free-will to play with and dertermin yourself the future set of chain...

Another aspect that is important here is of the distinction between the knowing subject and the object. Most of what was talked about previously only mandates cognitive deta, but if consciousness was only bound to cognitive deta and memory, then why are our eyes build with more nerves going from the bain to the eye instead of more going from the eye to the brain? Is all this simply for pattern recognition?






"If at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable insatiable emptiness lay hid everything, what would life be but despair?" - Kierkegaard

Sorry I took so long to approve this post; I forgot about this. Anyway, Pnoom!, you can now ask Frenchy 3 questions.

Alright.

1. How would you improve the definition, as in, is there a better one you have in mind?

2. Can you give a case where self-consciousness does not exist even when there is the potential?

3. By what process do we use the "sufficient amount of sensory-deta" to "choose what you do within the bounds of a set of possibilities defined by the previous actions?"

I should have proposed a definition in my rebuttal, my bad. Here is what I have : Consciousness is not simply the perception of object or a particular sensation felt, it is being aware that you are yourself an entity perceiving or feeling these things. In other words, consciousness is being aware of your awareness. Thus, having 'consciousness' requires having the concept of it.*

*(This is where the distinction between self-consciousness and self-awareness comes from. An elephant seeing himself in the mirror and going for the dot on its forehead exhibits awareness of a dot on his forehead, and therefore a form of self-awareness, but as far as we know elephants, we assume they don't achieve self-consciousness.)

-Well as a drastic example, think of a feral child (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_of_Aveyron for a particular example). This of course is a rare case, but even with a more common case, like say a child raised by abusive and neglectful parents who never gets a chance to actualize in self-consciousness, or even someone forced into child labour who never gets the chance to educate himself, etc. Think of examples where language does not exist in someone but has the potential to exist. I do not think self-consciousness is possible without some form of language capable of fairly high level of complexity, as the notion of consciousness itself is rather abstract don't you think?

By the process of reasoning.

OK, Pnoom!, you can give a rebuttal now.

Alright, thanks.

Good point.

First off, thanks, that was a fascinating read. Another example might be the children of the woman whose father locked her in a dungeon for 24 years.

However:

The case I just mentioned is an example of this.

However, I would argue that the wild boy did have self-consciousness, as evidenced by his ability to show empathy towards the crying mother. The key question, then, is whether that self-consciousness arose from his time in "captivity" or whether he would've acted the same before then, had he had the opportunity.

I'll return to this shortly, but I want to address this point first:

Reasoning, it seems to me, is inherently cause and effect. Take given data and form the most logical conclusion of what to do based on that data. That different people make different decisions with the same data I attribute to the different experiences in a person's life that inherently are different data than what any other person has.

If reasoning truly is cause and effect, then two people in the same situation, who had identical life experiences up to that point, would make exactly the same decision. To be perfectly honest, I think this is exactly what would happen. Unfortunately, it's impossible to test.



Now, returning to your earlier point:

This is interesting, and I agree that self-consciousness as we're defining it is difficult (if not necessarily impossible) without language. I wouldn't say impossible because I often have thoughts that make sense to me but which I can't explain with words (as in, I'm not thinking in words). Thus the concept of self-awareness (which leads to self-consciousness, as you've pointed out), is possible to conceive without language, though impossible to verbalize. Thus it would be impossible to know whether elephants are self-conscious or not, even though they are clearly self-aware.

That said, I think we can see "lower" levels of self-consciousness in nature. The lowest level would simply be that every animal, for the most part, has an inherent survival instinct. This protection of its own life doesn't even reach the level of self-awareness, but it hints at the concept of a self. Every animal can distinguish itself from other animals, even if it can't recognize itself in a mirror.

Similarly, many animals care for their offspring. This is a somewhat higher level of awareness; not only are the animals fighting to protect their own lives, but those of their children. This may be purely instinctual (and thus cause and effect), but it is some degree of awareness.

Even higher on the "awareness ladder," some animals are able to tell their own offspring from another animal's offspring by the use of sights and smells. Again, this is purely cause and effect, but it shows awareness in that not only does the animal fight for its own life, it fights for the life of animals connected to it.

Above this would be the elephant example I used before, recognizing itself in the mirror, as well as recognizing other individuals.

The leap from here is being able to conceptualize self-awareness, which leads to self-consciousness. This all stems from complex brain processes (such as the ability to develop/comprehend languages and develop/comprehend abscract ideas) which I have already argued are cause and effect.

Thus I think that even with your definition of self-consciousness, it can still be reduced to cause and effect factors.

Alright Frenchy, it's time to give your final rebuttal and then sum up your case.

How does the ability to tell when someone is sad denote self-consciousness? It denotes the ability to associate which is something that only requires self-awareness, the boy saw her tears and remembered that when he has tears they are from bad things. Take elephants again for example, they demonstrate concern for their family members, they help out the weak and/or injured and they even appear to grieve over another dead/dying elephant, they show a fascination bones, tusks and other remains of dead elephants. Same goes for most animals who tend to associate within species to some level or another.

...and sometimes you make mistakes. Why? Because the conclusion you choose isn't bound to the chain of cause and effect, it is a choice you made based on that chain of cause. You reason on cause and effect, reasoning is external to the chain. You don't just take any given data and form the most logical conclusion, you choose a conclusion you think is the most logical one amongst a possibility of many other conclusions.




To be able to look back, to reason the chain of cause and effect that led you to post or to do so on any other event, just shows that reason isn't inherent to cause and effect, but is above.

Are we to assume the two people in this same situation with same identical life experience both want the same things in the future and out of life? If they want the same thing, then yes, chances are they will make the same decisions based on the same information, but our actions are aimed towards a goal. This even to the simplest or more complex actions: I scratch to ease the itching and I save money to have an early retirement. If both person, assuming that both are self-conscious, want to put a nail in a wall and they each have an identical hammer and nail, the same will be done, but if one wants to smash wholes in the wall instead...


If you think they should both want the same thing because they both grew up the same, think of this, which is the closest we have to your example: Why is it that conjoined twins share different interest (they do share a lot, but I've yet to hear of surviving conjoined twins who share everything)?


Here is an example, they start naming their similar interests at first, then you hear about the differences.
http://noticiero.zoomblog.com/archivo/2008/02/13/siamesas.html

I'm not sure I understand you clearly here. I also often have thoughts that make sense to me but which I can't explain in words, but that is because I'm having these thoughts in another language which I do not have the ability to translate into words. Nonetheless, it remains a language representing abstract concepts. You still need to have a concept of self-consciousness in order to have it.


As for knowing if elephants have self-consciousness

That is because we cannot know for sure unless we manage to understand the language with which they could conceptualize self-consciousness with, thus for lack of better understanding, we assume they don't. If they did, it would still be by the same mediator (language).

An inherent survival instinct is...well, simply an instinct. It doesn't even require a concept of one's self or any concepts whatsoever.

A concept of a self is much more complex thing to achieve than self-awareness. To conceptualize something (like a self), you need a language of some sort, for how could you represent yourself a concept with no way to represent it?

Like I mentioned above, being able to conceptualize anything is a matter of having the proper tools (a language capable of doing so).

Being able to reduce something to another doesn't make that thing defined by what it has been reduced to. Being able to reduce something to another is simply neglecting aspects of that thing. I can reduce a person to a footstool but that doesn't make the person only a footstool, it just makes a person reduced as a footstool. It is still a person. So of course my definition of self-consciousness can be reduced to cause and effect factors, but that doesn't mean that self-consciousness or consciousness itself is completely bound to a chain of cause and effect.

To the original claim, I say this : Consciousness is a concept, and an abstract one for that matter. I dare even say consciousness is something metaphysical, an abstract concept upon which we conceptualize other concepts (like the concept of free-will). Thus consciousness is beyond a mere physical process. I have also said that reason isn't bound completely by a chain of cause and effect, and I now clarify that reason is an ability of consciousness (or that requires it). Thus consciousness is in greatest part bound by a chain of cause and effect, but isn't completely bound to it.

Alright, now Pnoom!, give your last rebuttal and sum up your case.

I should probably finish this up...

I just finished reading The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio, which I think provides strong evidence that consciousness can be reduced to physical processes. He argues that consciousness can be split into core consciousness (which happens in pulses every time you encounter a new stimulus) and extended consciousness (which builds up over your life due to your memory). He argues that consciousness results from the final step in a three step process:

1) encounter a stimulus
2) form a mental image of the stimulus
3) form a mental image of yourself doing #2

In this third step, an organism comes to know of itself, and it is this that constitutes core consciousness. When an organism builds up an autobiographical catalog of these memories, then it can be considered to have extended consciousness. Core consciousness is possible without extended consciousness, but the converse is not true.

By looking at a patient during an absence seizure, we can see the external signs of core consciousness. Patients in such a seizure do not fall to the floor or convulse, but they stop what they are doing and stare blankly. When the seizure ends they may have an absence automatism, where they still stare blankly, but start acting again. They have no idea who they are, who you are, or what they were doing when the seizure happens until the automatism ends. They lack any purpose, because they are unable to form mental images of themselves as they encounter stimuli.

Much of the evidence he provides for his view involves looking at various diseases that affect these steps, and which ties core consciousness to certain physical structures in the brain (mostly located near the midline of the brain). Damage (such as lesions) to these structures disrupts core consciousness. Moreover, damage to structures that are responsible for memory (such as the hippocampus) disrupts extended consciousness. If consciousness existed independent of causal factors, this would not be the case.