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| Open Forums for ExChristian.Net > Rants and Replies > Consciousness - in or out? |
| Posted by: Eccles1:2 Mar 1 2005, 08:42 AM |
| I think, therefore I make up stuff. If we can nail this question, I believe everything else will make more sense - maybe... |
| Posted by: MrSpooky Mar 1 2005, 08:48 AM |
| Tee hee. My major is cognitive science. ^___^ |
| Posted by: anony~mouse Mar 1 2005, 08:48 AM |
| I voted "I don't understand the question, but I'm lonely" because it was the closest option to "I have no idea." |
| Posted by: quicksand Mar 1 2005, 08:52 AM |
| Yes, except with one exception – mine is mostly in my pants. |
| Posted by: Diogenes Mar 1 2005, 08:53 AM |
| I voted 'No, Don't be silly', not because I think you're silly, but just for the 'No' part. After all, trees don't have brains. Am I being silly? |
| Posted by: anony~mouse Mar 1 2005, 08:55 AM | ||
Good point. Plants don't have brains, but they've been shown to have a certain degree of consciousness. |
| Posted by: Clergicide Mar 1 2005, 09:27 AM |
| This seems like a question about immortality. Can consciousness transcend death, if it is a seperate entity from our physical and mental selves. Immoratality wouldn't be as palpable unless conciousness was preserved after death. Conciousness depends on the functions of the physical organism, however. If the physical organism, your body, dies, the mental organism, your brain, is cut off from everything it requires to function. Without the mental orgasim, you are left with no consciousness worth preserving. How do you explain near death experiences? The same way you explain similar chemical imbalances of the mind. |
| Posted by: atheist_ewtcoma Mar 1 2005, 09:51 AM |
| Souls and spirits or for relgius nuts and the superstitious. Souls and spirits or only hog-wash, But what ever makes you feel warm and fuzzy. |
| Posted by: Tocis Mar 1 2005, 09:55 AM |
| I kinda liked the "universal consciousness" idea and chose it. However, my opinion is that there may well be more than what science can make out so far (if we rely on science alone, naturally the answer to the poll question is yes). |
| Posted by: Lokmer Mar 1 2005, 10:18 AM |
| Brain only? I don't think so. Neural systems? I think so. Human beings have two major brains, and several minor ones spread throughout their body. Our neural networks working in concert give us consciousness. The brain in our heads, the most complex of these neural networks, gives us higher consciousness - i.e. our awareness of our own awareness. However, our gut-brain (the neural network in our stomach) and our other nervous systems are aware on their own, act on their own, and do not necessarily obey the brain in our head. These other systems are certainly aware, respond to stimulus (both physical and emotional/cognative), and talk to each other and to our head-brain. It is even possible to strengthen the connections between the different systems, giving one a greater sense of "being" in one's body. Consciousness is the result of the body. Everything we can learn about it tells us that it IS the body. Can it survive without the body? There's no reason to think so, but it is a wonderful idea . -Lokmer |
| Posted by: notblindedbytheblight Mar 1 2005, 01:32 PM |
| Here is a little of what I think: "Further, a consciousness cannot merely be conscious of itself, as Descartes implied. To be a consciousness, it must be conscious of something external to itself. Only after it is conscious of something external can it identify itself. Like a car motor that generates electricity for it's own use, it needs to be kick-started by something outside of it. It needs existence." In order for the mind to be conscious, it must be able to perceive something outside of itself; otherwise, it would not be conscious. (Don't hate me Lok!) In order for a stomach to be conscious, it would have to be aware of the brain and doesn't that take a brain to be aware?  |
| Posted by: Lokmer Mar 1 2005, 01:50 PM | ||
The stomach is made of neural tissue, and is plugged into the central nervous system independantly of the brain. It's something I found surprising when I was reading up on neurology recently. "Gut Feelings," butterflies in the stomach, etc. are the actions of the gut-brain. It doesn't seem to have higher-cognative abilities (i.e. it is not aware of itself, but it is aware of things outside itself. Its connection to the brain is tenuous, and it exists largely independantly. However, there does exist a feedback loop between the two brains. I can dig up some neurology papers for you if you like... -Lokmer |
| Posted by: notblindedbytheblight Mar 1 2005, 02:00 PM | ||||
No, I believe you!  Would that equate to plant life maybe? This is just me going on here, but I hesitate to call that consciousness or even awareness. But I really don't know. Maybe there are different levels of consciousness? But, what would happen to the stomach if it had no way to perceive (through the senses) would it still have butterflies if the mind did not first process sensations first? |
| Posted by: MrSpooky Mar 1 2005, 03:07 PM | ||||
What the heck? Gimme some data, here. |
| Posted by: SmallStone Mar 1 2005, 03:18 PM |
| "Yes, of course" because that's the closest to what my understanding of the science suggests is the case. You're giving the "Yes, of course" answer a slight by using 'merely' (and its implicit negative connotation) in the question. I would bet $100 that your personal answer is not that one. Just for fun, how did you vote Eccles1:2? |
| Posted by: woodsmoke Mar 1 2005, 03:25 PM |
| Where's the "I don't know, but I hope not" answer? Honestly, though the subject fascinates me, I barely begin to understand the philosophy and neurology y'all are speaking of here. The best I can do is temporarily side with whichever seems to be the most reasonable explanation and hope that some part of us goes on after we die, at least for a finite period of time. I wouldn't want to suffer eternity (it would get unbearably boring, eventually), but I would like to go on after this life and continue learning and living all the things I couldn't while inhabiting this body. |
| Posted by: Eccles1:2 Mar 1 2005, 04:29 PM | ||
Well, I'm using "merely" in the sense "nothing other than". I set this poll up because I haven't arrived at a conclusion yet - which isn't necessarily a bad thing. And I can't remember how I voted! I think it was "probably, but I don't have an explanation for near-death experiences". As it happens I have several explanations, but once again, no conclusions. I don't think the chemical imbalance argument really cuts it. Check out http://www.near-death.com for some fascinating discussions and testimonies. |
| Posted by: jaded Mar 1 2005, 04:52 PM |
| I'm lonely, so I was tempted to go with the last one. I had to vote for "yes, of course." It sounds cold and heartless, but there has never been any evidence to suggest that consciousness is anything more or less than a biological occurence. Understanding it's origins doesn't make it any less amazing though. |
| Posted by: Clergicide Mar 1 2005, 05:27 PM | ||
Not really that fascinating to me. NDE is just that 'near death' or a 'not death experience'..when someone truly expires, when they are fucking dead and nothing in them works, and only 'then' when they come back and talk about it will I listen. But that can't happen. http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence01.html The definition of 'brain death' is the cessation and irreversibility of all brain function, including brain stem. So a brain-dead NDE is an utter fabrication. This is why I give no credit to NDE..the brain is still very much active in all these cases, or they wouldn't be able to get up and talk about it later. When the brain truly dies, that's it..they call it social death for a reason. If you want to chase psuedo-science to fill the religious hole..go nuts..but that's as big pile of horseshit as any religious belief on the afterlife you'll find. |
| Posted by: spamandham Mar 1 2005, 09:43 PM |
| Well, I picked (1) because it seems most likely, although I can't rule out the solipsist idea that I'm the only conscious being and my perception of reality amounts to a self reinforcing possibility within absolute chaos. |
| Posted by: Diogenes Mar 1 2005, 09:52 PM | ||||||
Hell, don't ask me for data - you're the cognitive science major. I have no data - I'm just making an assertion. From my worldview, plants are conscious and I don't have to prove it. You must prove they're not. Sorry, that quine character forever warped me.  I'm sure there's some pseudo-scientific studies like in the book: 'The Secret Lives of Plants'. |
| Posted by: Eccles1:2 Mar 2 2005, 01:20 AM | ||
Easy tiger. We don't want splenetic juices all over the walls! And just because the pseudo-science is laughable, it doesn't mean that people's experiences aren't interesting. After all, acupuncture works pretty well whether you believe the mystical hoo-hah about it or not. And I don't think I have a religious hole - I'm just interested in stuff.  |
| Posted by: Pseudonym Mar 2 2005, 03:06 AM |
| I think a more pertinent question would be; "Is consciousness a product of biological process?" To which the answer is most assuredly yes. That's why corpses don't get up and walk around at night; their biological processes have ceased, therefore so too have their consciousnesses. |
| Posted by: quicksand Mar 2 2005, 06:32 AM | ||
Also the result of the evolutionary process. That's why it shouldn't seem that much of a suprise that higher forms of primates and other mammals exhibt conceptual thinking. The Arrow of Common Cause, so to speak. |
| Posted by: anony~mouse Mar 2 2005, 11:38 AM | ||||||
*shrug* I don't have data off-hand. But I've read articles about people who hooked up plants to lie detectors and the plants showed strong reactions to their surroundings. Like, the guy would light a match and walk toward the plant as if to burn it, and the plant would FREAK OUT; its reaction would practically go off the charts. Then as soon as the guy put the box of matches back, the plant would seem to calm down. Nothing else could have explaned that reaction. I also heard of a case where someone was murdered in a plant store or something - no witnesses. One of the detectives hooked one of the plants up to a lie detector and found that the plant reacted strongly when the murderer (an employee) came near it. |
| Posted by: MrSpooky Mar 2 2005, 12:33 PM |
| That sounds suspiciously pseudoscientific. I highly, HIGHLY doubt this has been under any sort of peer review in the journals of neuroscience. |
| Posted by: anony~mouse Mar 2 2005, 12:40 PM | ||
It probably hasn't. But then, how could you accurately experiment with this? If plants do react to their surroundings in a manner not unlike consciousness, then they probably won't react the same way twice. Pavlov experienced these problems - the dogs reacted differently to students depending on whether or not they liked them. It may be pseudoscience, and I certainly am skeptical of it, but I just can't stand people who write something off without question. I'd like to try this experiment for myself. Until I do, I'm witholding judgment. |
| Posted by: MrSpooky Mar 2 2005, 12:48 PM |
| Anonymouse, I discount this because I don't see any way a plant could possibly react in the manner you suggest. My skepticism is not vacuous. Yes, plants do have mechanisms that make it react in response to certain environmental stimuli, but it has no way of organizing data, much less visual data into discrete semantic objects, and thus no way of recognizing a human being. All it has in terms of "visual input" is light intensity and wavelength. It does react to sound, but it seems to be more of a motor vibration function rather than aesthetic organization of sound. I've studied several organisms with varying degrees of neural complexity, and as you get cruder and cruder in terms of complexity in neural tissue (from the nerve-net "ladder" of flatworms, or the ganglionic clusters of earthworms) you notice they tend to be action-reaction automata rather than something that possesses that weird, hard-to-define thing we call "consciousness." |
| Posted by: MrSpooky Mar 2 2005, 01:24 PM |
| I'd like to add that I discout the concept of plant consciousness because it doesn't have a brain in the same sense I discount the idea a knife could have leapt into a murder victim's chest on its own because a knife does not have muscles. Honestly, I think that study was either made up or misinterpreted along the way. It contradicts everything I know about biology and the psychology of consciousness, so unless I get some pretty firm data about the phenomenon (maybe even conduct a few experiments myself), I don't have to remain agnostic about this. I reject it outright. |
| Posted by: anony~mouse Mar 2 2005, 01:25 PM | ||
I never suggested that it was. I meant that I don't want to be the kind of person who writes things off - not that you were. All I'm saying is, plant consciousness is an interesting thing to think about and I'd like to try testing it sometime. |
| Posted by: MrSpooky Mar 2 2005, 01:30 PM |
| Sure, if there were some background so we could form a hypothesis about plant consciousness, it might be pretty interesting. But we don't. There is no basis to think that a plant is conscious any more than there is a basis to say that a stone has emotions. Even then, consciousness is a very elusive phenomenon... its subjective nature makes it extraordinarily difficult (if not impossible) to really examine it in detail. (look up a little about Searle... famous philosopher of the mind who happens to be a professor here at Berkeley). |
| Posted by: anony~mouse Mar 2 2005, 01:38 PM | ||
 I think it's interesting to think about, with or without background or hypothesis. There's no evidence for a god, but that's interesting to think about too. |
| Posted by: MrSpooky Mar 2 2005, 01:45 PM |
| Theology: The art of arguing about speculations with more speculations. Yes, it's interesting to mull on about, but it's hardly objective, true, or justified knowledge. Interesting though. |
| Posted by: euphgeek Mar 2 2005, 01:53 PM |
| This "superstitious" "religious nut" chose "No, we all have souls that ride in many different bodies". |
| Posted by: Biggles7268 Mar 2 2005, 01:55 PM |
| F.L.A.K.E. by Bill Harris MD http://www.vegsource.com/harris/flake.htm Eva Greenleaf from the Federation of Licensed Astral Kinesio-Ergonomists dropped into my office the other day. "My philodendrons are sooo smart," gushed Eva. "They know what I'm up to every time. When they saw me coming with my pruning shears they just made me do this," and she held up her middle finger in what I first took to be an obscene gesture. Then I saw the blood so while I stitched up her finger Eva filled me in on the latest about plant consciousness. "Plants are telepathic you know," said Eva. She batted her eyes and mascara descended on my surgical tray like blue snow. "And they grow faster if you sing to them." Ta, ta, another day. I closed up and went home. Two days later I called Eva on the phone. "Eva, your stitches need to come out in a week. And since I can't sing, I played the Haydn Trumpet Concerto to my geraniums." "I'll bet they just adored it," gurgled Eva. "Nothing happened at first," I said, "but in the cadenza I squeaked off a triple high C and a neighbor's dog ran in and bit my leg." Eva slammed the phone down. I spent three days in the library. None of the botany texts mentioned either a nervous system or consciousness in plants. I called Eva back. "Silly boy," said Eva. "Of course they don't talk about it in those kinds of books, they're all written by scientists. No imagination. No cosmic intuition..." "...no gullibility?" I suggested. Eva slammed the phone down again, but she sent me a book in the mail. Meantime I checked out my geraniums and it did seem they'd sprouted up rather fast. I called Eva back. "About that book 'The Secret Life of Plants'," I said with embarrassment. "I didn't have time to read all 373 pages so I fed it to my computer, the one that cuts out bias, redundancies, anecdotal evidence, and non sequiturs. Now your book's only two pages long." Eva's gasp ruptured my left eardrum. "Ooh!" she squealed, "that dogbite made you so mean!" "It's not the dogbite," I said. "It's the hernia. The triple high C. But I called to tell you I was wrong, the geraniums really grew." "Ah," said Eva."Geraniums are very baroque. They'd appreciate Haydn." "Not to mention the carbon dioxide I was blowing all over them," I said. Eva slammed the phone down again. I took the remaining pages of Eva's book to my friend Joe Steeltrap, Ph.D in plant physiology at Dismal and Depressing Institute of Technology. "Why should plants be conscious? " laughed Joe. "They're not going anywhere. Animals have a nervous system to sort out the physics of inertial mass, acceleration, and relative velocity so they can eat, mate, and survive." "But plants move too," I said. "I've seen time lapse photography; vines grabbing for trees, flowers turning to the light, trees bending to meet gravity head on." "Tropisms," explained Joe. "Plant transmitters, auxins and abscisic acids, are released and the plant bends to the environment." "So what?" I said." Neurotransmitters like acetylcholine and dopamine are part of the human nervous system. Maybe plant consciousness is a spread out version of our own, slow motion with big synapses." "Consciousness only has value if you can do something with it," said Joe. "What would be the value of awareness, fear, pain, or love in a plant? It can't run, it can't fight, it can't pick up its roots and go meet other plants. There's no adaptive value in plant consciousness so there's no reason for it to evolve, so it didn't." "That's a dodge," I said. "Plants are alive. They breathe, grow, reproduce, and die. Why shouldn't they be conscious?" "Because they don't have a nervous system!" shouted Joe. "What is this, the the Humpty Dumpty school of semantics? 'Plants are alive, so they're conscious, rocks are conscious, the whole universe is conscious?' When you generalize a word and rob it of specific meaning it ends up meaning nothing." "Then what is conciousness?" I asked. "Bad luck," he said. "It comes with the cerebral cortex. Nature's interested in species that survive and if you're conscious that you exist, then you're conscious that you might not, a powerful incentive to the squash. That's where all the consciousness and the coordination go on in the first place. Plants have no brains, so animals eat 'em and they don't even know it, 'cause nobody's home. They win by reproductive virtuosity. Just layin' back, soakin' up the sun, takin' a little rain now and then. Lucky buggers." I pointed to Eva's book. "How about Backster's experiments with the telepathic philodendrons and the brine shrimp? Every time he boiled a shrimp the plant in the next room spiked the polygraph." "Get this," said Joe." I hooked up a polygraph to a bowl of jello once and when somebody slammed the door I got a tracing. I sent it off to a neurologist and he read it 'normal electroencephalogram'. That's a joke, son. Anyway biologists at Cornell and Washington State copied Backster's tests and got nothing, except what we'd known for a hundred years, that plant cell membranes have varying electrical potentials that relate to cell metabolism." Eva found me a few days later playing an old PBS video tape. Marvelous reportage about an old guy in Los Angeles who could pray over corn seedlings and make them grow faster. To prove he was legit the TV crew padlocked the glass box the seedlings were in, came back in two days, and documented that all the seedlings on the side he'd been praying over were 3" taller than the ones on the other side. "My favorite show," giggled Eva, "after 'The Three Stooges'. Imagine that divine man, communicating with plants." "Eva," I said, "I think I have the gift. Now that I've read your book I'll bet I can do it too." Eva was skeptical but between us we made a duplicate of the PBS setup, and I started praying over the corn seedlings. After awhile Eva got bored and left. So I snaked an IV tube under the lid and blew carbon dioxide down the tube on one side. Then I fed the plants fertilizing solution through the tube. The plants grew randomly. When all else fails do the experiment. I prayed like mad for 47 hours but only random growth continued. If the experiment fails too, fudge the results. I took a wire and picked the lock, an easy job for someone who, like the old guy, had once lived in L.A. Then I put all the fast growers on one side and the runts on the other. Eva popped in just after I closed the glass box. "My dear, dear doctor," effused Eva looking at the plants and once again pointing her middle finger at me. "You do indeed have the gift. What more proof that plants are conscious?" I called up Sam Turk's Hamburger Heaven. "Sam," I said, "This is the Doc. I'd like a side of cow for me and a friend, we'll be eating it there." "And what, good vegetarian buddy with the weird sense of humor, would you like on it?" asked Sam. "Whatever you put on it these days," I said jubilantly. "It's 48 years since I ate a cow." "Right!" said Sam. "Pigs can fly. Do you want one of those too?" "It's no scam Sam, this is a celebration," I said. "We've just proved plants are conscious so there's no point being a vegetarian anymore. It's just a question of eating conscious animals or conscious plants." Bill Harris M.D. |
| Posted by: Biggles7268 Mar 2 2005, 02:26 PM |
| http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/philosophy/Personnel/susan/LucyRhiannonRuth/title%20page.html this is an interesting read in favor of plant conciousness |
| Posted by: MrSpooky Mar 2 2005, 02:55 PM |
| Biggles, I am very cross with you. EVERY SINGLE PAGE I've read so far has been done using incomplete science and poor interpretation of the data. A plant biologist would be tearing his hair out. I'll rebut these in just a sec. |
| Posted by: MrSpooky Mar 2 2005, 03:12 PM | ||||||||||||
Cleve Backster's Groundbreaking Experiment:
It is for this very reason that the scientific field does not accept the conclusions of Backster... the experiment was not repeatable. If an experiment is not repeatable, it falls under great suspicion of being a hoax or an error. Movement:
No, slime molds do NOT have a will of their own. Peripheral processes simply react to given stimuli (such as nutrient content, light, etc). There is no centralized structure for data to go to. I could cut off a frog's legs and make them twich by applying an electrode, but this doesn't entail consciousness. There is no inter-communicating network here. This is bunk. Intelligence:
Auxins and other growth factors are sensitive to light, and these are produced at the apical meristem of the plant that directs growth. All there is here is a peripheral mechanism with nothing to direct or integrate data... nothing entails consciousness. Cooperation and Interaction:
Sweet god, plants do not "avoid" each other out of some sort of intellectual awareness... plants wage chemical warfare against each other by producing growth inhibitors and enzymes to degrade growth inhibitors. Again, these are peripheral processes, NOT an inter-communicating network structure. Deception:
This is little more than another spin on the "guided evolution" crap. BUNK. Chanelling:
Okay, first of all, this was probably a micronutrient he was getting at, since macronutrients are required by all plants in huge quantities. Micronutrients too, but I digress. Other nutrients are unessential, so I doubt the botanist was referring to them. Plants can grow with deficiencies in micronutrients... not very well, but they can. However, even then, it is nigh-impossible to get an outdoor area without trace amounts of micronutrients. Just micronutrients dissolved in the air is sufficient... sometimes at levels that are almost undetectable (we actually had to invent new filter and detection mechanisms to test certain micronutrients). For "Language" and "Memory," I want to see some peer review papers. I'm sorry, but this looks like just another bullshit website. It plays on misinterpreting scientific findings and using the God of Gaps logical fallacy like there's no tomorrow. It's horrible. Shame on you for citing it. Shame. |
| Posted by: Biggles7268 Mar 3 2005, 04:12 AM |
| sheesh and no comment on my first post in here??? |
| Posted by: Bruce Mar 3 2005, 04:41 AM |
| To get back to the original point: It is my personal understanding that process theory is the best explanation for consciousness. Under this, consciousness is an emergent property that is transcendant and wholly a matter of processes of living. One of the major philosophies of reductionist science is that everything can be explained by breaking it down to the elementary aspects, that the total (whatever it is) is nothing more than the sum of its parts. I tend to not agree with that. Chaos and process theory clearly demonstrate that many, if not all, things are rather a transcendent emergence from the interplay of many things. For instance, the mind is not the brain and the brains' component parts (cells, nerves, chemicals) cannot in and of themselves demonstrate the mind. Rather the mind (consciousness) is something that includes all of these brain components and is more than just the sum total of the components; it transcends them. It has been demonstrated that people with brain injuries can lose mental faculties and it has also been demonstrated that people with brain injuries can recover abilities, memories, etc. as another part of the brain assumes these roles. Some of the early experiments by Pibram demonstrated that memory seems to not be stored in one specific area of the brain, because people who had brain injuries or surgery that removed parts of the brain, could recover these memories. So whatever the mind is, it is not the brain, but is an emergent property of the whole person, including the brain. Just me two cents. //Bruce// |
| Posted by: MrSpooky Mar 3 2005, 12:20 PM |
| While I disagree with reductionism, I am most certainly a materialist. Bruce, I'd be very careful in using the word "transcendant." It seems to imply material transcendance, when there really is no evidence for the case. "Emergent property" is more than sufficient, IMO. The human brain is a network of intercommunicating and interacting nodes. This is a very special structure, because it acts as a centralized mechanism to process, weigh, and decide on a certain action based on previous experience and knowledge. So while the mind is an emergent property, it is more than a simple peripheral function... it takes in peripheral input, combines it with other knowledge acquired from previous peripheral inputs, and creates an output that is an action. Somewhere in this processing, there is what we call "consciousness" that acts as a software of sorts in this processing. This is why I am so adamant about plant "consciousness" being bunk. While yes, plants do have functions and processes, there is no centralized network for inputs to be weighed. Just simple chemical action-reaction automatic mechanisms... DIRECT and PERIPHERAL mechanisms that are no more conscious than your leg is conscious when it kicks in response to a hard tap on the knee tendon. Thus, complexity is not really the issue with consciousness or intelligence, STRUCTURE is. I can admit that certain things such as a hive of bees can appear to have a crude intelligence, but a plant having intelligence, or even consciousness is unintelligible to me. |
| Posted by: Iconoclastithon Mar 6 2005, 12:35 PM |
| "I think the brain focuses the Universl conciousness' in other words, I am pretty convinced about{but not 100%} the idea of "Collective conciousness, collective unconciousness". |