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Latest consciousness theory: Rocks have minds?

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File:A small cup of coffee.JPG Remember, we were talking recently about how researchers are seeking a compromise between materialist and non-materialist views of consciousness, principally because materialist theory has gone nowhere for centuries? You can be darn sure these people wouldn’t be offering a compromise if there was any hope at all of materialism/naturalism ever working.

Now there’s this, from the New York Times, ”Mind of a Rock”:

And the part of our world that is most recalcitrant to our understanding at the moment is consciousness itself. How could the electrochemical processes in the lump of gray matter that is our brain give rise to — or, even more mysteriously, be — the dazzling technicolor play of consciousness, with its transports of joy, its stabs of anguish and its stretches of mild contentment alternating with boredom? This has been called “the most important problem in the biological sciences” and even “the last frontier of science.” It engrosses the intellectual energies of a worldwide community of brain scientists, psychologists, philosophers, physicists, computer scientists and even, from time to time, the Dalai Lama.

So vexing has the problem of consciousness proved that some of these thinkers have been driven to a hypothesis that sounds desperate, if not downright crazy. Perhaps, they say, mind is not limited to the brains of some animals. Perhaps it is ubiquitous, present in every bit of matter, all the way up to galaxies, all the way down to electrons and neutrinos, not excluding medium-size things like a glass of water or a potted plant. Moreover, it did not suddenly arise when some physical particles on a certain planet chanced to come into the right configuration; rather, there has been consciousness in the cosmos from the very beginning of time.

So instead of nothing is mind, the latest proposal is, everything is. Hush, listen when your coffee cup is talking … 😉

Comments
This brings up an interesting (to some) question: Can rocks dream? The best science on the subject replies with an emphatic "NO". 1) There is no organization of matter (or computational substrate) which can cause contemplative meditation and/or consciousness (cScM/c). 2) Rocks don't have that kind of organization anyway. Q) But what if consciousness is a separate entity which can be associated with brains and/or rocks equally? A) I already answered that - see 1 and 2 This thread is nearly nine months old. Isn't it time to close it down?steveh
July 6, 2014
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Not to speak of the latest findings on the Holy Shroud of Turin by Dame Isabel Piczek.Axel
September 28, 2013
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Well, if you reject a belief you hold, by definition, it wasn't unshakeable, was it? In this case, it involved an objective moral code, and renouncing it, you are left with no objective moral reference frame. Now, you obviously claim it is because your intellectual integrity demands you renounce it, since you now have a better understanding of matters. It may well be assignable to the 'No true Scotsman..' category, but when we are discussing basic world-views there can be no meeting of minds. We choose them - even if we think we do so on the basis of flawless reasoning, so it is the very wellspring of fundamentalism on both sides. However, as regards specifics, it strikes me that an affinity and communion of the mind with the Holy Ghost is immeasurably more plausible than an affinity and communion between the mind and a rock. Doubtless, you will say, 'Well, what does science know about the Holy Ghost?' To which I will reply, what does science know about the mind. You will, perhaps, continue 'Well at least we know the mind exists.' To which I will reply, 'Well, there are very many Christians who are in absolutely no doubt as to the existence and action of the Holy Spirit, despite the fact that He would neither be receptive to a summons to make himself available for scientific study, nor be susceptible to study under the prevailing canons of empirical science. I'm thinking of some knowledge of the Holy Ghost more substantial than so-called alpha waves. Although, relative to nothing QM has an 'inside track' on the relationship between the mind and matter, compared to classical physics, the notion that even QM could get close to understanding the mind, like QM's antecedent paradigm, itself leads inevitably to scientism, and is, in its way, no less primitive. Likewise, an 'a priori' conviction of the truth of materialism, like that of evolution, is simply non-negotiable - least of all with God. A terminal personality clash occurs. God says, 'See who wins?' But the atheist has no ears for such taunts, living in a permanent present. Something the saints have always aspired to, but for a different reason than that presumably motivating our much-missed cat, Percy, and those who feel an evolutionary kinship with the animal kingdom. You are a little anomalous in that you inevitably tie yourself up in sophistries trying to justify assumptions as if they were arguments. There are no atheist arguments that could hold a candle to scientific arguments for theism. Though I know you'll be raring to set me straight on that. Spare yourself the effort, Elizabeth. What is interesting is that, for most of us, our knowledge of and faith in Christ, predates any knowledge of the evidence for theism which science has been regularly turning up.Axel
September 28, 2013
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Oops. apologies. Meant Axel.Elizabeth B Liddle
September 28, 2013
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Elizabeth Liddle:
The trouble is, Mung, that you have boxed yourself into skepticism about any view other than your own, by means, ironically, of the No True Scotsman fallacy. You claim that I must have the views I have because I was never a True Believer; and I cannot have been a True Believer because I have the views I have. Do you see the problem?
Absolutely I see the problem. This is my fist post in this thread. Imagine how surprised I was to find you talking to/about me in it.Mung
September 28, 2013
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Such memories are particularly unusual in that the experiences, themselves, were much more vividly registered by the person concerned than those of dreams, and even of our day-to-day waking perception. Lusty dreams, one would imagine, would be the most clearly remembered, when one wakes up, but in my experience, they are not that much more memorable than those I struggle unsuccessfully to remember, even though I can remember one from half a lifetime ago (though still not that vivid or clear). In any case, the conscious intelligence was not functioning, not able to function at all, when these experiences occurred. I don't know about the autonomic intelligence - whether the patient's elementary functions, such as respiration were provided by a life-support system. I suspect so, since the brain was drained of blood, or frozen. Freezing of the blood came into it somewhere in the case I'm thinking of.Axel
September 28, 2013
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That special relationship with the Holy Spirit never seems to leave them, and is, at worst, only slightly attenuated.Axel
September 28, 2013
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And just one of a slew of supporting indicators that such experiences are transcendental.Axel
September 28, 2013
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'Now, IF they were stored off-line, ‘in the cloud’ then you would expect them to be fixed. However, if memories are laid down and stored by a biological mechanism then it might be that exact details are not always preserved. There are various theories as to why that might be the case but, whatever the reason, it seems to be the case.' A very good point, Jerad.Axel
September 28, 2013
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I started off disliking Susan Blackmore as the TV channels' were regularly wheeling her on as their default rent-a- skeptic. And I still suspect she's making too good a living in that role to relinquish it any time soon. I was also shocked that she appeared not to know that, in fact, Einstein's theories had indeed, been proved - and quite some time ago, which she apparently didn't realise. Although, maybe, there are one or two theories of his, as yet unverified or disproved, for all I know. However, the more I saw her, the more she came across as a sympathetic, likeable sort of person; even dangerously veering towards honesty at times! Heck maybe she's a true-believing skeptic - if that's not an oxymoron. Just, perhaps, lacking a career death-wish. Well, we theists and deists are finding the most rabid, fanatically-fundamentalist, religious zeal, in what one might have considered the most unlikely of atheist locales, although I would bear a greater resemblance to them than her, I must admit. Which, I must stress, in no wise detracts from the truth to which I so earnestly, if erratically attest. An example, perhaps, of the wisdom of sometimes 'shooting the messenger'! A possibility that had never occurred to me before.Axel
September 28, 2013
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Indeed, the brain is to all intents and purposes, dead, and they are remembered with perfect clarity decades later. Inferring a comparisn with dreams is therefore gratuitous, quite groundless.
It was my impression that research has shown that memories are extremely unreliable. I recall one study which asked people what they were doing when then heard about the planes hitting the World Trade Center. They were asked first within a year of the event (or something like that) and then asked again about five years later. The thinking was that traumatic events 'burn' themselves into your brain. And yet, those surveyed changed their own stories between the two times questioned. Significant details were altered. The take-away message is that memories are created and, sometimes, altered. Now, IF they were stored off-line, 'in the cloud' then you would expect them to be fixed. However, if memories are laid down and stored by a biological mechanism then it might be that exact details are not always preserved. There are various theories as to why that might be the case but, whatever the reason, it seems to be the case.Jerad
September 28, 2013
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Well, as I've said before, Axel, I most emphatically did not start off with "that attitude to the mind". I came to it rather painfully, after a great deal of thought. And Susan Blackmore, as you will probably know, ditto, and having looked at a great deal of evidence. The trouble is, Mung, that you have boxed yourself into skepticism about any view other than your own, by means, ironically, of the No True Scotsman fallacy. You claim that I must have the views I have because I was never a True Believer; and I cannot have been a True Believer because I have the views I have. Do you see the problem?Elizabeth B Liddle
September 28, 2013
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Here is the article I referred to in #20, but forgot to link: http://science-spirituality.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/medical-evidence-for-ndes-reply-to.htmlAxel
September 28, 2013
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#22. With that attitude to the mind, Elizabeth, it's not surprising that you are a permanently amorphous, moral relativist. The mind is all we have to go on. I know you'll reiterate the alarm clock explanation. The problem with that is that these experiences are palpably not dreams. Read the literature and you will find the different ways in which they differ totally from dreams. Indeed, the brain is to all intents and purposes, dead, and they are remembered with perfect clarity decades later. Inferring a comparisn with dreams is therefore gratuitous, quite groundless.Axel
September 28, 2013
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I suspect I understand what you are driving at, nirwad. If a person is unspiritual and has little to no potential for it, then such experiences are likely be negative somewhere on a long negative spectrum, at best, producing no spiritual fruit. Getting heaven into your head is ultimately no substitute for getting your head into heaven.Axel
September 28, 2013
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Axel My note to Kantian Naturalist was meant to somehow "decoupling" at large psychism and spirituality. The conflation between the two is in fact very common and dangerous. While, in reality, nothing is more distant from spirituality than psychism. Drugs are psychism powerful amplifiers, so their use goes directly in the opposite direction than spirituality. I don't like to deal with these topics here and in public. If nevertheless you are interested to them, I suggest you to read at least Guénon's "The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times" (especially the last 17 chapters).niwrad
September 28, 2013
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Axel, that is a good question. I don't think that anyone is not telling what they believe to be the truth. I have yet to be persuaded that what they believe to be the truth is the truth. I think the problem arises from a faulty conception of the nature of experience. My position is that experience is constructed "on the fly" as it were, as events happen and as they are recalled. I think this accounts, for example, for the common experience of dreams that end in the sound of an alarm clock, where the dream logic seems to lead up to the alarm clock, even though alarm clock, in reality, occurred at the end of the dream. In other words, I think it is intrinsic to the way the brain works that we retrospectively infer a sequence of events that we have experience. Therefore, a simple account of "what I remember" is not necessarily a reliable account.Elizabeth B Liddle
September 28, 2013
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Nirwad, such drugs, in a large enough dose, would have the potential to drive a person permanently insane or kill them, so what?Axel
September 28, 2013
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Elizabeth, what is your opinion of the out-of-body experiences verified under controlled conditions, attesting to the independence of the mind from the brain? Or do you think the specialists concerned are not telling the truth. The article linked below, concluding with the following paragraph should be of particular interest to you, though 4 years old: 'Michael Shermer states that, in reality, all experience is mediated and produced by the brain, and that so-called paranormal phenomena like out-of body experiences are nothing more than neuronal events. The study of patients with NDE, however, clearly shows us that consciousness with memories, cognition, with emotion, self-identity, and perception out and above a life-less body is experienced during a period of a non-functioning brain (transient pancerebral anoxia).'Axel
September 28, 2013
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I don't have experience of psychedelic drugs, nirwad, but I'm puzzled by what you mean when you say: 'To compare Satori with drugs is like to compare Light with darkness. In drugs the subject/object distinction collapses because drugs have the potentiality of disintegrating the individual at his root.' I can neither understand what you mean by that sentence, nor where you get the idea that having 'the potentiality of disintegrating the individual at his root', which would mean total insanity, is relevant. Two of the most compelling NDEs I have respectively read about and watched on YouTube were accounts by two young people who had accidentally taken a drug overdose. I have had a range of religious experiences without the assistance of drugs, and was struck by the experience of some NDE'ers of the sense of knowing everything, which I once experienced for a while. I would say that the genuine NDE experiences, including those two drug-induced one, are mystical experiences of an extraordinarily privileged nature. Does this woman seem as if she has been disintegrated at her root? http://www.theguardian.com/world/richard-adams-blog/2011/jan/18/lsd-experiment-footage-1956Axel
September 28, 2013
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I thought you guys liked Nagel? And the idea that "consciousness" is a kind of "mindstuff" that is independent of the material substrate? I'm a neuroscientist. I don't think rocks have minds for the simple reason that rocks don't have the neural architecture necessary for a mind. Nor do I think a newly fertilised ovum has a mind, for the same reason. Nor a dead person. That's why I don't think ID makes much sense in the absence of evidence for something with a material brain to do the designing. I don't think that minds are possible in the absence of the material substrate necessary for their existence. The OP seems to be indulging in some own-foot-shooting here.Elizabeth B Liddle
September 28, 2013
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I thought everyone knew that about rocks. If I'm planning on going anywhere near rocks, I try to find out as much as I can about their local zeitgeist, temperament, political leanings and so on. It pays to do a little research into such matters, as you don't want to seem a Yahoo to them, because of what they would perceive as a grossly insensitive demeanour. I've been mocking the multiverse as being somewhat less than a parsimonious explanation of everything, and yet it could indeed be seen - together with ubiquitous, matter-created consciousness, the ultimate in parsimony. Hey, guys, let's cut to the chase and just cut science out all together. Save a lot of time and effort.Axel
September 28, 2013
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Kantian Naturalist
Some kinds of powerful psychedelic drugs collapse the subject/object distinction, and Zen satori also collapses that distinction (from what I’ve been told).
It is evident you have not a direct experience of Satori ("from what I’ve been told"...). To compare Satori with drugs is like to compare Light with darkness. In drugs the subject/object distinction collapses because drugs have the potentiality of disintegrating the individual at his root. In Satori nothing collapses and, much less, the individual is destroyed. Only illusions disappear. What is called Satori, Nirvana, Samadhi, Bodhi, Fana... - depending on the tradition - is direct over-rational (but not irrational!) Knowledge of the Self.niwrad
September 28, 2013
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Reading the NYT's questions the idea of brains in people.! The last frontier of space. Oh no the rest of it is still a frontier. They ain't done nothing! Christianity teaches that man has a soul and this from Gods image. Rejecting this without even respectful nod means they reject an option for truth. There is no evidence human thought has any place in the head/brain of himans. Its just presumed by soul deniers. What is a brain scientist?? What are they doing and who is paying them??Robert Byers
September 27, 2013
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OT: Has Science Shown That We Evolved from Ape-like Creatures? by Casey Luskin - Fall 2013 Excerpt: A closer look at the literature shows that hominin fossils generally fall into one of two categories—ape-like species or human-like species (of the genus Homo)—and that there is a large, unbridged gap between them. Despite the claims of many evolutionary paleoanthropologists, the fragmented hominin fossil record does not document the evolution of humans from ape-like precursors. In fact, scientists are quite sharply divided over who or what our human ancestors even were. Newly discovered fossils are often initially presented to the public with great enthusiasm and fanfare, but once cooler heads prevail, their status as human evolutionary ancestors is invariably called into question. - http://salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo26-science-faith/has-science-shown-that-we-evolved-from-ape-like-creatures.phpbornagain77
September 27, 2013
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KN, I’m sorry that I cannot continue with this discussion. Preaching in the wilderness is not my thing.
I'm sorry you feel that way -- I was beginning to enjoy the conversation. But I'll respect your choice.Kantian Naturalist
September 27, 2013
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KN, I'm sorry that I cannot continue with this discussion. Preaching in the wilderness is not my thing.Mapou
September 27, 2013
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By the way, this belief in inanimate consciousness is not really a new idea. Isaac Asimov was writing about Gaia consciousness decades ago. There were others before him. It’s all superstition though.
Panpsychism is actually a very old idea. Leibniz defended panpsychism in the 17th century. The article that News linked to above (which apparently only I read, so far) is about the resurgence of panpsychism in contemporary philosophy of mind with Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, and Galen Strawson.Kantian Naturalist
September 27, 2013
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It is certainly true by definition, unless you want to play with semantics. Opposites are complementary by definition.
Now I'm not sure what we're arguing about. Was your claim
(1) there cannot be self-consciousness without consciousness of an object
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(2) there cannot be any consciousness that is not both self-consciousness and consciousness of an object.
I agree with (1) but not with (2). I don't think that (1) is true 'by definition', though there is a very powerful argument for it -- what Kant called "the transcendental deduction of the categories". And I certainly don't think that (2) is true, let alone "by definition".
Nothing can collapse the subject/object distinction. Nothing can be its own opposite. That’s nonsensical. The object is never “out there” to begin with. It resides in one or more areas of the brain. Everything you consciously experience is in your brain.
By "the subject/object distinction," I was referring to the structure of consciousness as having a subject-pole and an object-pole. If you think that nothing can affect consciousness in such a way as to collapse that structure, you clearly haven't taken mushrooms. (Or enough, anyway.) And I must strongly protest the thought that "the object is never 'out there' to begin with". What I consciously perceive is part of the world, and what's going in my brain is part of the causal process that explains how I experience it. (By 'perceive,' I distinguish perceiving from, say, dreaming or hallucinating. I take it that only someone deep in the grip of Cartesian skepticism would assert that they can't distinguish between these kinds of conscious experience.)Kantian Naturalist
September 27, 2013
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By the way, this belief in inanimate consciousness is not really a new idea. Isaac Asimov was writing about Gaia consciousness decades ago. There were others before him. It's all superstition though.Mapou
September 27, 2013
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