I had anesthesia once. Subjectively it’s about as close to being dead (or simply “not existing”) as I can imagine. One moment I was perfectly awake, and the next moment I was hearing the sounds of people talking around me and I groggily became aware of my doctor getting me to acknowledge him.
There is still the question though, was my subjective experience post-surgery accurate? It’s conceivable that consciousness is suppressed to varying degrees, while the creation of memories is more significantly impacted. I may have had some degree of consciousness but my subjective post-surgery experience has no knowledge of it.
And putting aside anesthesia altogether you have the phenomena of people that get blackout drunk. For some period of time they were up, senses receiving input and processing it even if their actions were high impaired, yet afterwards there is no memory. (There are of course degrees to this too, sometimes a person remembers the tiniest pieces, as if from a dream, sometimes not at all)
The entire topic invites the question: Is consciousness required for intelligent behavior? Unless you include consciousness as part of the definition of intelligent, it is not an easy question.
Somewhat on that topic I’d highly recommend the book Being no One by Thomas Metzinger
Begs the question, what is intelligent behavior? Most of the time I see pretty anthropocentric interpretations of this (which are often well-reasoned) but there has to be some degree of definition that we can agree to as a starting point.
My current view is one of consciousness operating on a spectrum, some animals/creatures/entities are "more aware"[1] than others but then you have to ask whether that just leads to consciousness being a useful phenomenon for interaction with other creatures or if it's something more meaningful. Were humans conscious before the invention of language?
Another aspect of this is if "Chat-GPT" isn't conscious it kind of proves your dog is right? You're saying language/interaction isn't that big of a deal, and so it's based on biology. Not a lot different between a cat and a person if you really take a step back, let alone a chimpanzee and a person. Or maybe we're all not conscious at all in the sense that we mean it. I.e. it's just a useful illusion/delusion and evolutionary adaptation for cooperative behavior.
Then we have to insert free will, determinism, etc.
The whole thing is a mess. Most likely we're not conscious at all, nor do we have free will, as typically described. But we're conscious in that we're perceiving and our body as a whole has some amount of degrees of freedom to operate, but we're not special. Maybe that's scary idk.
>Most likely we're not conscious at all, nor do we have free will, as typically described.
No these aren’t likely. Consciousness is the human experience, there’s no way we aren’t conscious as that wouldn’t make sense linguistically. As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do. Trying to disprove humans having free will is mental masturbation and nothing more.
>As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do
This is a statement spoken with an authoritativeness that it doesn't deserve. There has never been a time I can remember that "free will" ever seemed real to me much less something I inherently "know"; it is at best an imprecise phrase for something I don't have a word for. The physical body is going to do what it does, the thing experiencing qualia is just along for the ride.
As for "bad science", free will as it is described seems that it would violate causality. That a macroscale effect can occur spontaneously without a paired action.
Exactly. To those who think free will is real, what exactly are you claiming is true about a particular set of atoms (shaped like a human)? Are they atoms not doing what they should do? How can a box of atoms control themselves? What does that even mean? Is physics being defied when the atoms are arranged into the shape of a brain?
Free will is literally a non sensible concept and is plainly just a subjective illusion.
1. Humans evaluate, determine, and select which causal effects to attempt/apply, among the selections in their known agency.
2. The world, given its complexity and chaos, is non-deterministic.
Humans determine their actions (will) where fate (determinism) isn't prescriptive of their course. Humans don't have a monopoly on will, but we do have our own. If you've ever survived, it's because you chose to eat. Eventually, even decisions like these which you may feel are implicit are also subject to be reversed if we want to and will.
> 1. Humans evaluate, determine, and select which causal effects to attempt/apply, among the selections in their known agency.
Explain this process in the framework of physics and thermodynamics. Specifically, what differentiates this free will process from mere causal process?
> As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do.
Free will: the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.
A known side effect of Parkinson’s drugs is the development of compulsive, (hypo)manic behaviors like gambling and hypersexuality — people who have been very straight laced their entire lives can change drastically. Are you suggesting that we should hold such patients equally accountable for making poor choices, as they are just as free willed as anyone else?
What of people with crippling, general anxiety, of no fault of their own, but simply as a result of genetics or exposure? If they aren’t as productive or let things slip, is that because they simply aren’t trying hard enough? (Even there — if we say one is trying harder, does that not imply an impediment to “act at one's own discretion”?)
Perhaps we should consider banning ADHD medication altogether — given everyone has free will, what practical difference does it make to put a substance into people’s bodies — they can just choose to make good decisions, right?
Of the decisions you regret, and knew that you would before acting, why did you make them? Why haven’t you just made the meta-choice of choosing to choose the right things from here on out? You can see the utility in making such a choice, right? So can you make that choice? Your discretion would likely be to make that choice, so all that’s left is to act on that discretion, which should be no problem because you have free will and you are not constrained by the natural chemical processes occurring in your brain and the physical laws that define them.
> As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do.
A lot of suffering exists in our society due to that belief you have regardless if it's correct or wrong and similar suffering exists in our society from beliefs formed based on knee-jerk feelings or personal biases. I agree that people have free will if we replace the term "free will" with "personal desire." However, that doesn't imply the personal desire could've been different because otherwise the person would be different as well. I've also encountered many people that remarkably don't believe in free will, so the premise you made is false.
> There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.
This is unfortunately only a brief for Nature Neuroscience -- from 2008, so take with a grain of salt -- and I haven't been able to find the full paper. I also would hesitate to claim this as "lack of free will" or similar; the conclusion sentence from the brief seems to be most-accurate:
> Thus, a network of high-level control areas can begin to shape an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.
This study was disproven. It turned out there was a software/firmware bug in the machines used for the tests (mri?). instead of thinking yeah this doesn't make sense maybe we should take a step back, they just went on with spreading misinformation of the worst kind.
If "having free will" is defined as "feeling like you undeniably have free will" and "having consciousness" is defined as "feeling like you undeniably have consciousness," then sure, it doesn't make sense linguistically to dispute that.
I think part of what makes you conscious might be your relationship with the passage of time. If you experience it you’re probably conscious. If you can relate to things that have happened or to things that will happen then you’re more conscious. This definition requires you to be able to communicate somehow, which even animals are able to do in some limited way.
You’re on the right track re: the book I recommended, it’s dense but you might enjoy. Heck the intro alone is interesting and you can probably get that through a Kindle “free preview”.
As for my response to you, I think it’s simply “yes”. And also that we lack any sort of clear & universally greed upon definitions for many of the critical terms here.
These were my areas of study, refining through ever more practical levels to cognitive science and then computational linguistics, so I know just enough to know I’m not an expert and true expertise doesn’t really exist yet for truly understanding any of this. (And my comp ling formal education has been made woefully obsolete since the time I began that path). For now, all we can do is chip away at the questions, as this linked article tries to do. Chip by chip.
Why can’t it just be a useful social abstraction? I’m not arguing scientifically that it doesn’t exist, just curious and have my own current thoughts about it.
Your eyes only focus on a small part of what you are looking at and your brain fills in the rest of the details. I think you can construct an analogy here with your pen and your eyes too.
> there is no social component required for consciousness
I didn’t suggest that it was required. I think?
> And where exactly are those thoughts occurring?
Idk but they sure never give me a choice in which ones I get! They’re also in English. I wonder what humans “thought” before the invention of language? Grunts? Hollers? Is it any different than w old thinking “bark”?
You suggested that consciousness is no more than a useful social abstraction.
You can examine consciousness without the need for words. This is the issue with this topic, people stay in the structure of language to try to define that which language is born out of, not realizing that you can take a step back and inhabit that very thing itself and observe it directly. It just takes practice.
> You suggested that consciousness is no more than a useful social abstraction
And why not? I'm still unclear why this couldn't be the case. Maybe what we describe as consciousness developed as an evolutionary adaptation for group coordination and survival? To your earlier point about identity, it seems like you're suggesting identity and consciousness are the same, no?
> You can examine consciousness without the need for words.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?
Consciousness is the aggregate of emotional, sensory, and thought formations. With these forming a thread into a narrative through memory, we forge identities. All of this happens in the substrate that is consciousness.
If it is unclear why consciousness is not a social construct, you can experiment with isolation and introspection. Retreats, meditation, psychedelics, anything that involves observing the movements of your mind without getting tangled up into words and semantics.
> Consciousness is the aggregate of emotional, sensory, and thought formations...
That's one theory among many. Are these identities static or dynamic in nature?
> If it is unclear why consciousness is not a social construct, you can experiment with isolation and introspection. Retreats, meditation, psychedelics, anything that involves observing the movements of your mind without getting tangled up into words and semantics.
I don't find this compelling because it's really difficult to find a person who wasn't born to another person and lived amongst other people in order to run this experiment.
"Observing" myself thinking of a movie while I meditate seems circular and I don't think you can be an observer and be the observed at the same time.
It's as much a theory as saying that a body is formed of limbs, torso, head, etc. I have a body, I inhabit it and can observe it directly.
You're trying to word your way out of words.
It's like you're asking me what's atop a mountain and you keep making conjectures and assumptions about what is or isn't up there. The answer is to just go climb it instead of taking your assumptions for reality.
> I don't think you can be an observer and be the observed at the same time.
This is typical internet behavior but I just have to link some Chomsky talks on the topic. One's 7 minutes, and the other's 85 - I recommend the second, of course ;)
Especially relevant if you read that article yesterday "disproving" Chomsky by noting that ChatGPT exists, and wanted to consider what his rebuttal might be.
TL;DR:
My current view is one of consciousness operating on a spectrum,
He would definitely agree
there has to be some degree of definition that we can agree to as a starting point
He would definitely disagree, as I understand your sentiment; settling on a definition for the concept you're interested in is as impossible as settling on a definition for "meaning", "love", or "justice".
it's just a useful illusion/delusion and evolutionary adaptation for cooperative behavior.
Alternative hypothesis discussed in the 85min talk: what if cooperation is a useful corollary for consciousness/higher level reasoning via internal linguistic structures?
The whole thing is a mess. Most likely... we're not special
He would whole-heartedly agree, in the cosmic sense, and whole-heartedly disagree in the sense of our relation to animals.
Thanks, I want to reply but it would do the conversation a disservice without watching this video and getting on the same page. If I get some time to do so I'll try and reply.
One thing I will just throw a bone on is this one:
> what if cooperation is a useful corollary for consciousness/higher level reasoning via internal linguistic structures?
Yes! Interesting! But what is cooperation? Is it mating? Are cats cooperating by mating and then parting ways? Are wolves (yes they are I think) cooperating? Different vocalizations from different animals mean different things and animals understand that. Is there a categorical difference between those patterns and the larger (although I don't know if this applies to the range of sounds) complexity of human language?
Bonus question, how does this factor in to someone who is more well-read than someone else, or maybe knows more languages? If Chomsky or others were to suggest there's no difference and you just hit a threshold by being a human with language, it still seems a little anthropocentric to me. I'm guessing that (and it's probably a taboo subject) there is differences in consciousness between humans as well - i.e. some people are more conscious than other people. It's not binary.
I don't think one can look at this as an either or thing but a spectrum of levels too.
Almost nothing in life is 100% black and white, quite literally everything you study has more and more edge cases the more you study, even math breaks itself if you try and prove it. But we have reliable levels of math that function as we need it. And generally most things are good enough you can use it reliably. Just because something may break doesn't mean it's useless or anything.
Free will is also a spectrum and we all have different levels and different experiences of it. We all have choices we make but we might not be even aware of them. Our body influences our choices and our thinking influences our body. A double edged sword.
I remember reading an inspirational tale based on a real author who had to save himself because of his medical bills. He was completely disabled and would write blog posts with his eyes and eventually became such a good writer he was able to publish books and move to Mexico and get nurses to help care for him etc. This guy who has literally only a brain and functional eyes became some millionaire though sheer determination to save himself. Then you might find some rich well off person kill themselves because they can't find a reason to live. Two extremes. One with everything another with basically nothing, I mean would really want to live with that your whole life? Is the natural thought to reverse that?
Then you have cats able to communicate quite well with in various ways. I could go on and on about my cat informing me when he is sick etc.
I never even got into the whole thing about how your trillion of cells right now are making their own decisions in your body. I mean what even are you but a million things you'll never see or think about unless you get cancer or something when your cells decide not to die. What are you without their death?
Also could go into how memories are stored outside the brain with worm studies etc, and how fungus solves mazes, how plants communicate by smell and sound, there is a lot of werid stuff the more you look.
I also had anesthesia exactly once so far & my experiences are similar. basically remember going under and then groggily becoming aware of the doctor & being informed that operation is done. I do recall my surprise at that statement as there was no experience of passing time. I feel this was fundamentally different from sleep in quality (or even deep meditation).
I to have pondered the consciousness vs intelligence question and tentatively concluded that consciousness is useful in developing of intelligence so as to provide factors to optimize for like energy, attention, physical goals etc but beyond that its not necessary. Intelligence is basically subdividing a signal into realistic subcomponent and then putting it all somewhat coherently to come up with a bigger picture as I see it. I feel the set of tools available to current crop of AI/ML architectures are sufficient to produce a human like intelligence if we/it figures out how to assemble it the 'right' way.
consciousness OTOH, I am not sure. that (human consciousness) may be very specific to makeup of human brain and some non-modeled things in individual neurons. this does not means AGI cannot be conscious but its consciousness would be really different from human one. For humans I do lean towards Penrose's Orch-OR thesis that consciousness maybe innately quantum in nature. not sure how much evidence exists for or against it.
Was going to recommend the same, it's a fairly quick read also. Watts has a version hosted on his site as well in various formats. I enjoyed the Notes and References section a lot also.
There have been people claiming that they were fully conscious while under anesthesia and felt everything, but were unable to do anything about it. I never really believed this.
One of the most terrifying things I’ve heard (from a final year med student, who was present in many surgeries) is that many patients under anesthesia react to pain. They move away from the knife, sometimes they make sounds as they’re being cut, etc. They just don’t remembers any of it afterwards.
I’ve had a few surgeries in the past and didn’t think anything of it, but now I kinda dread surgeries.
The problem is that people think of anesthesia as a single thing when it really has many different components that are managed separately. Unconsciousness is part of it, but so are analgesia (pain relief), paralysis (inability to move), immobility (loss of reflexes), and to a lesser extent, amnesia.
Anesthesia routinely involves the use of paralytics, which are separate from drugs used for analgesia (opioids or local/regional blocks) and inducing unconsciousness (propofol, anesthetic gasses). This can lead to situations where someone is paralyzed, their pain is under control (as observed by blood pressure), but the gas or propofol is insufficient to actually induce unconsciousness. Some of this comes down to individual physiology. Some of it is probably mistakes in anesthesia management.
Amnesia comes into this with the use of benzodiazepines. They can reduce anxiety before surgery. Or even during surgery if the patient needs to be awake. As a bonus, they can prevent memories from forming. Propofol can also cause amnesia, but it is primarily used to suppress consciousness.
from what I understand some forms of anesthesia just make you forget it ever happened. There are some procedures, colonoscopy is one i think, where the doctor needs you awake and able to follow commands or give feedback. The anesthesia just makes you forget it ever happened. It's really strange and kind of scary if true.
Propofol is specifically used to suppress memory of lighter surgery and procedures. Patients are conscious enough to answer questions and respond to requests, but they won't remember any of what happened.
I don't know enough about it to guess whether it actually eliminates psychological trauma or simply suppresses it so it's not conscious.
Alzheimers had a similar effect. There's a shortening window of memory which starts off normal and then gradually contracts. In mid-stage victims can't remember the start of a sentence by the time you get to the end of it.
Eventually all that's left are autonomic functions and perhaps a few very deeply engrained emotional memories.
Do you mean people answer the questions under propofol but afterwards have no recollection of the experience? If so that's exactly the type of thing I was thinking of
Anesthesia, black out drunk, and what about: before birth (and I mean eternally before, not just 9 months)? Perhaps our consciousness existed in some spiritual way, but no memories got translated to our biology.
--Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”--
It was kind of cryptic; I suppose I copied it there just to mean whatever the reader thinks it means. But, something along the lines of: much more important than physical birth is spiritual birth.
Being put under anaesthesia—along with some related phenomena around sleep—has led me to the personal conclusion that consciousness is memory. Or at least, memory is a fundamental requirement for what I consider consciousness. If I am awake and interacting but forming no memories, my subjective experience is that I have not been conscious.
> One moment I was perfectly awake, and the next moment I was hearing the sounds of people talking around me and I groggily became aware of my doctor getting me to acknowledge him.
Yep. I remember the nurse telling me to count backwards from 10 and I remember being a bit annoyed by it but still doing it. I don't know what number I got knocked out on. I don't even remember getting knocked out. The only thing I remember is hearing voices as I slowly woke up. No memory of anything in between.
> Is consciousness required for intelligent behavior?
No. Computers, machinese, animals, plants can display "intelligent" behavior. They have no consciousness.
There is still the question though, was my subjective experience post-surgery accurate? It’s conceivable that consciousness is suppressed to varying degrees, while the creation of memories is more significantly impacted. I may have had some degree of consciousness but my subjective post-surgery experience has no knowledge of it.
And putting aside anesthesia altogether you have the phenomena of people that get blackout drunk. For some period of time they were up, senses receiving input and processing it even if their actions were high impaired, yet afterwards there is no memory. (There are of course degrees to this too, sometimes a person remembers the tiniest pieces, as if from a dream, sometimes not at all)
The entire topic invites the question: Is consciousness required for intelligent behavior? Unless you include consciousness as part of the definition of intelligent, it is not an easy question.
Somewhat on that topic I’d highly recommend the book Being no One by Thomas Metzinger