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when did we develop conciousness?

Mercutio, you and I are obviously talking at right angles.

You say that I "have chosen to consider consciousness in terms which cannot be shared by any other".

I am considering consciousness in terms of the presence or absence of felt experience, as you correctly observe. And it's true that we can't be directly aware of each other's felt experience. But there's no doubt that we all have some type of felt experience. So I see no problem here.

I'm not concerned here with that's in it, just whether it's there.

We cannot share our inner experiences directly, but we can certainly share an understanding of what I'm referring to. And nothing beyond this is needed for our purposes here.

So I have 2 questions for you:

1. Do you have some real doubt about what it is I'm referring to?

2. Do you want to know why I believe that computers are not "conscious" under the definition I propose?

That might get us at least talking parallel. ;)
 
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im really enjoying reading the posts guys :D i'd love to contribute more but i'm kinda out of my depth on this one lol:)

i guess my original post was kinda looking at consciousness from a human perspective....as has been established it's pretty hard to know how much cats or goldfish are aware....and indeed what "awareness" or consciousness even means.....
but it seems to me that humans possess something extra...even if that something extra is hard to quantify....
i guess my working definition of consciousness would involve
1) self awareness - a concept of self, of existence...
2) cognition on a level beyond instinct - ie. an ability to over-ride instinct when necessary
3) the ability to create pictures, stories or abstract thought - which requires an awareness of "reality" - this is a tougher one to nail down - maybe the ability to dream is a precursor to or first sign of a developed consciousness....i dont know any theory on this - so any info would be great - are there any animals who dream? is it even logical to equate the unconscious(?) action of dreaming with a sign of consciousness?

i guess for this rather arbitary definition of consciouness then only humans (and maybe great apes??) would fit the bill - but this might just be because i'm looking at it from a very anthropocentric perspective....
i suppose in evolutionary terms, levels of consciousness have continually evolved - maybe (1) came first, then this allowed (2)....etc....
maybe there's more to come - a higher state we haven't reached yet (at least not drug free) :D
 
andyandy- I to am enjoying this thread, but as it is outside my field of expertise, I hesitate to contribute as well.

Mediasite Presentation Catalog

The link is to a lecture by Jay Ingram (2nd from the top entitled "Are you Conscious?") It's an hour in duration, but quite accessible for those not familiar with behavioural jargon.
 
andyandy said:
I've posted a simila thread on the religious/phil boards - but i'd like to look at it from a anthropological perspective....

we are pretty sure that say a fish has no conciousness as such - it is not aware that it is a fish....and that we as humans are aware - we are conscious......so....when did consciousness evolve? were homo-sapiens conscious of self? homo habilis? Chimps?

i remember watching a program where scientists showed that chimps could recognise themselves in the mirror - whilst monkeys couldnt. Does this mean that chimps are regarded as having a consciousness?

is there an evolutionary reason for consciousness to evolve?
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You're confusing consciousness with self-consciousness.
 
Piggy said:
Mercutio, I have a hard time teasing out your meaning b/c you seem to drift between discussion of language and discussion of objects as if there were no distinction.


What are you asking about, exactly, here? Are you asking why I use that word to refer to felt experience? Are you asking something about language acquisition?


You're saying that I learned the term "consciousness" via "public behaviors"? I don't understand this.


You've totally lost me here. How does language acquisition come into this in the first place? And even if it did, your statements about lacking a label-provider for every instance are incomprehensible to me.


Why do we need to concern ourselves with how we learn to speak?

I'm sorry, but I can't make heads or tails of all this.
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He's simply expressing Wittgenstein's arguments against a private language. However it is more obvious than anything could be that we learn we are conscious from our own consciousness rather than observing the behaviour of others.

Mercutio
Again I must ask, then, if it is "felt experience", and no one but you can feel your experience (and you can feel no others' experience), how is it that you learned to label this "consciousness"?
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By having the experience, and assigning a word to name this experience. Nothing could be more simple. Analytical behaviourists are all round the bend (as was Wittgenstein).
 
Interesting Ian said:
You're confusing consciousness with self-consciousness.
Click to expand...

yeah....for my working definition i'm kinda lumping the two together....ie. consciousness requires a consciousness of self.....:D

could you provide a definition of the two? what does it mean to be "conscious" as compared to "self-conscious" ??
 
andyandy said:
im really enjoying reading the posts guys :D i'd love to contribute more but i'm kinda out of my depth on this one lol:)

i guess my original post was kinda looking at consciousness from a human perspective....as has been established it's pretty hard to know how much cats or goldfish are aware....and indeed what "awareness" or consciousness even means.....
but it seems to me that humans possess something extra...even if that something extra is hard to quantify....
i guess my working definition of consciousness would involve
1) self awareness - a concept of self, of existence...
Click to expand...
Personally I see the mental abilities of the animal kingdom as a sliding scale. We (humans) try and divide these abilities into categories, which is fine, but in my view perhaps a bit arbitrary.

The OP concerns itself with what I think is self-awareness. The "mirror-test" has been mentioned, and I think that for animals who rely greatly on their sense of vision (such as humans) it is a fair test for self-awareness. Several species of primates (including humans) and dolphins pass this test. They know they are not seeing another creature, but just a reflection of themself. In order to realize you are seeing a reflection of yorself, you must be aware of yourself as seperate being. You must be self-aware.
2) cognition on a level beyond instinct - ie. an ability to over-ride instinct when necessary
Click to expand...
Lemmings can override instincts. :)

Seriously, at what point does the ill-defined "instincts" stop and cognitive abilities take over?
3) the ability to create pictures, stories or abstract thought - which requires an awareness of "reality" - this is a tougher one to nail down - maybe the ability to dream is a precursor to or first sign of a developed consciousness....i dont know any theory on this - so any info would be great - are there any animals who dream? is it even logical to equate the unconscious(?) action of dreaming with a sign of consciousness?
Click to expand...
Animals dream, as any owner of a dog or cat knows.

The thing I suspect you are getting at is the "abstract thought" bit. The problem is how to define this.
 
andyandy said:
could you provide a definition of the two? what does it mean to be "conscious" as compared to "self-conscious" ??
Click to expand...
It could be said that a rhesus monkey is conscious, in that -- unlike, say, a rock -- it is awake and aware, has emotions, feels pain, etc. But it might or might not be self-conscious, which is to say, capable of some rudimentary awareness of its own existence as a unique conscious entity within a world composed of other conscious and non-conscious entities.

A friend of mine summed it up once by saying, "I don't think a dog ever had the thought 'I'."
 
Raphael said:
andyandy- I to am enjoying this thread, but as it is outside my field of expertise, I hesitate to contribute as well.

Mediasite Presentation Catalog

The link is to a lecture by Jay Ingram (2nd from the top entitled "Are you Conscious?") It's an hour in duration, but quite accessible for those not familiar with behavioural jargon.
Click to expand...

cheers for the link - it's a great lecture :D - seems like there's a whole load of other interesting topic videos there too....
:) :)
 
Piggy said:
A friend of mine summed it up once by saying, "I don't think a dog ever had the thought 'I'."
Click to expand...

That might be true -- but I do wonder if it can be proven conclusively one way or the other.

FWIW, I suspect that at least some dogs I've seen had the concept of "ME!" down pat -- but I'm willing to bet that none of them contemplated their places in life -- beyond identifying their places in their "packs". ;)
 
Piggy said:
1. Do you have some real doubt about what it is I'm referring to?
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I think there may be some real doubt in some way, though certainly not to the degree of "You feel pain? What's that?"
But rather, what does it mean to feel something? To experience something? We have an intuitive understanding of this, which is probably accurate to a certain degree, but intuition is often wrong, especially when we're talking about our own experiences.
I think Mercutio is basically saying that introspection isn't a very good method for finding out about conciousness or the activities of the brain. As such he's looking for a more objective approach; find out how the word is acquired in order to understand what it refers to. I'm not sure that is the best approach, but it seems like it will probably be useful, anyway.

But it seems like just an attempt to look at the question from another angle, because he doesn't trust introspection. I don't think he's suggesting that you and he have qualitatively different "felt experiences", rather I think he's suggesting that the term itself is rather vague and possibly inaccurate if we're talking about what's actually going on. I think he may have a point.

(And Mercutio, I'm sure I've just massacred that point in this jumble, if so... sorry for trying to help! :) )
 
Merc,
Fine with me.
The position of the philosophy of science called behavior analysis is that while observable behavior is the proper subject matter of a science of behavior, there are publically unobservable private behaviors which are not. Consciousness, thought, cognitions - these are things we experience, but cannot quantify in a way that can be dealt with scientifically. These are called private events. There is no way any of you can tell how I think in word/picture/emotional/memory anymore than I can tell about you.
What Merc has been saying about language is that it's how we learn to label our internal states. Skinner talked about his toothache. How do we know?
 
Piggy said:
It could be said that a rhesus monkey is conscious, in that -- unlike, say, a rock -- it is awake and aware, has emotions, feels pain, etc. But it might or might not be self-conscious, which is to say, capable of some rudimentary awareness of its own existence as a unique conscious entity within a world composed of other conscious and non-conscious entities.

A friend of mine summed it up once by saying, "I don't think a dog ever had the thought 'I'."
Click to expand...


"I" is a human construct.


It's obviously however dogs realize they are an individual or else they wouldn't act the way they do. Why would for instance my dog steal my other dogs rawhide when he isn't looking unless he had some concept of self. Without a concept of self how could he do something with the intent for self pleasure?
 
Piggy said:
Would it, tho? You don't think a complex robot could ever be built that could do something like this?

I agree that parrots are conscious, btw. But again, for me, the question is one of "felt experience" rather than complexity of interaction with the world.
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Of course we could build a robot that could do that. It wouldn't even have to be very complicated. But it would be a replica of our reactions (or of those of the parrot, so parroting the parrot .. sorry, carry on ...). We would have to predefine, perhaps not the specific action, but the pattern of behavior of the robot. So the actions of the robot would only be proof that we are conscious, not that the robot is.

The parrot on the other hand, is not a robot. I cannot be certain, of course, that it was not carefully trained to perform this stunt, but I find it more likely, based on other behavor shown by parrots and other intelligent animals, that it acted on its own account.

Hans
 
As an anecdotal point - watch people interacting with a Sony AIBO dog (which is a robot dog) , it is quite amazing that after a little bit of interaction with the robot what they start to "project" onto the robot.

I used to programme mine so I knew what it was programmed to do and how it would react to certain stimulus yet people would constantly "fill in" a personality for it which would include traits such as "desires", "motivations", "likes and dislikes" which were demonstratively not part of its programming or strictly speaking even its behaviour.

Did these people consider it to be alive? No - BUT if you could replace the body of it with flesh and fur I suspect people would then feel quite comfortable with saying "it has some form of consciousness".

I'm adding this into the mix because I think it starts to demonstrate that how we informally determine whether something else apart from "me" is conscious or not is probably not a good indication whether that other thing does share the same "private behaviours" as we all seem to think we do.
 
You can "replicate" the actions of consciousness but creating it is a whole different deal.


We even have robots that completly mimic human reactions. And even more complex "chat bots" that are so complex they seem to be another person talking to you. As if they are conscioius. But they aren't.

Just because we can replicate the actions consciousness of other animals or humans without resorting to "real consciousness" doesn't mean real consciousness doesn't exist.

Get what i'm saying?
 
On the subject of anthromorphism (but otherwise somewhat off topic):

Some years back, there was often, at electronics or computer fairs, a little "robot", roughly in R2D2 style roaming the aisles, handing out brochures, chatting to people in a mechanical, toneless voice, and generally attracting attention. At that time, technology was hardly ripe for making an autonomous machine like that, and sure enough, a guy would be sauntering along nearby, holding one hand in a large bag, and the other near the corner of his mouth.

The point is, because the thing was vaguely andriod in shape (or a shape that had otherwise, through the Star Wars films, been established in the common consciousness as an android), people, certainly including me, were willing to at least contemplate the possibility that it was an autonomous robot. Had it been built in the shape of, say, a small car, everybody would immidiately have assumed it was remote-controlled.

And in fact, now that we do have autonomous robots roaming factory floors and other places, even private homes, they are generally carefully made in non-android shapes, probably to make people less insecure about them.

Hans
 
Dustin said:
And even more complex "chat bots" that are so complex they seem to be another person talking to you. As if they are conscious. But they aren't.
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I think on the contrary, early chatterbots (ELIZA, PARRY) demonstrated that a very simple program could give a superficial illusion of 'conscience', as did Darat's AIBO.
 
Dustin said:
"I" is a human construct.


It's obviously however dogs realize they are an individual or else they wouldn't act the way they do. Why would for instance my dog steal my other dogs rawhide when he isn't looking unless he had some concept of self. Without a concept of self how could he do something with the intent for self pleasure?
Click to expand...
Btw, I'm not arguing in favor of my buddy's observation. I was just giving an example of the distinction.
 
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