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From: chris@labtam.labtam.oz.au (Chris Taylor)
Subject: Re: Consciousness is the comprehension of time
Message-ID: <chris.804324136@labtam>
Organization: Labtam Australia Pty. Ltd., Melbourne, Australia
References: <3sd988$jra@ping1.ping.be> <gordon.803924867@spot.Colorado.EDU> <3sh1ma$rle@prime.mdata.fi>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 07:22:16 GMT
Lines: 169
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.speech:6001 comp.ai:30938

jsand@mits.mdata.fi (Jan Sand) writes:
>In article <gordon.803924867@spot.Colorado.EDU>,
>GORDON ALLEN R <gordon@spot.Colorado.EDU> wrote:
>In a deep meditation (not sleep), there is no awareness of time.  To what level
>of consciousness do you refer?  If you mean ordinary waking consciousness, then
>there is a comprehension of time but I cannot say that this is a necessary and 
>sufficient condition. One may, for example be "absorbed" in a project such that
>awareness of time is not present.  But then this is not an ordinary waking 
>state.  

>Perhaps what the question is concerns the perception, not of the
>absolute measurement of time, but the perception of the change
>of the relationships of objects in the field of observation, 
>which is the essence of time in consciousness....
>....


I think you can say that consciousness and the passage of time
are inextricably linked.
"Perception of time flow" is a required feature of consciousness
but not a fundamental description of the phenomenon.

A more fundamental definition I think is to refer to consciousness in terms
of a process (or emergent phenomenon) whereby a system has a model
of it's environment which it uses to control it's responses.

This definition is very general and like the question 'what is life'
can be stretched to extremes - where in-organic systems can be observed
to have similar features.

To make the definition more practically useful it needs some reasonable
referal to systems observed in biology or simulations thereof.
(i.e We don't go overboard and find 'life' or 'consciousness' in
an automobile because it drinks and moves when it's 'brain' is awake.)


Diverging from the topic somewhat...

Personally I think it's problematic to define consciousness in terms
of something that 'humans have' but insects and computers don't.
It is best treated as something that is a matter of degree.

Humans, insects, bacteria and computer-algorithms can all have internal
models of their environment built in (or evolved).
In that very basic sense they are all 'conscious' by my definition,
but by vastly differing degrees.

The idea that bacteria are viewed as conscious would not make most people happy.
It goes against our intuition about the word 'consciousness'.
That's because we tend to associate the word with 'high level' life forms.
But here I'm trying to find a more fundamental definition based on
fundamental observed behaviour. 

To try and get another perspective, focus on one particular property
of environmental modelling - self-awareness.
(This property is what most people naturally associate with consciousness.)
(So in that view self-awareness IS consciousness.)
(By my more basic definition self-awareness is one property of consciousness.)


Self-awareness is basically the property by which the system
centres itself within it's environmental model.

Humans have a complex sense of self-awareness.
As we go down the evolutionary chain there is a general
concensus that this quality is less complex.
For something like an ant the sense of self reduces to terms of 
'I am here - food is there - I go there'.
The 'self' is just a referance point.

We like to think of that sort of consciousness purely in terms
of stimulus-response with varying degrees of complexity.
Then it's easy to compare bacteria with ants and say that ants are
just more complex 'machines'.

We generally do not attribute any quality of self-awareness to such
creatures, and thus we find a dilema as we move up to higher animals
- is an ant self-aware? a fish? dog? monkey? my next door neighbour?

To avoid this dilema I think you have to view many conscious systems 
as having self-awareness as a central part of their environmental model.
This quality merely appears to become more complex as the environmental
model itself becomes more complex.

At the bottom of the scale, for systems like bacteria self-awareness
reduces to it's most basic form. So basic as to be facetious.
Here we are dealing with self-awareness in such a basic form that it is
alien to our normal concept - so most people will object to it.

The alternative is to define self-awareness as something that magically
appears suddenly at some point - depending on the complexity of 
neural-networks or something like that. But how do we draw the line.
In reality the line is bound to be fuzzy and so we might as well accept it
as such in the first place - allowing the self-awareness concept to extend
in principle to anything that behaves within the fundametal guidelines.


A typical objection to the definitions here might be
"Is a person who is asleep self-aware/conscious?". 

Firstly put aside the everyday usage of the words.

Then by the above definitions, yes they are.
Their environmental models are just operating in a different 'mode' from
their waking state. While asleep (or brain-damaged) their apparent 
self-awareness may be effectively on par with that of a lower lifeform -
because they are operating using a simplified environmental model.

Higher level objections can come in the form of Roger Penrose's
"Emperors New Mind" type of arguments. Just because a system behaves
exactly like a 'conscious' human being does not make it conscious.
Something different is happening at the Quantum Mechanical level
to produce things that are 'really' conscious.

Something amazing may well be happening down at those levels
related to the consciousness we observe in 'wet-ware'.
But to say that this effect only occurs for certain life-forms just
gets you back to the same problem of where to draw the line.
(i.e Does this QM conciousness effect occur in an ant? fish? ....) 
And it does not preclude a similiar type of magical QM effect occuring
in other non-organic systems.

Other objections delve into the meta-physical domain and you can get lost
there forever...


Basically, I'm defining consciousness (and self-awareness) in very basic terms.
What most people talk about when refering to making systems (magically)
'conscious' or 'self-aware' I would view as complexification of some
basic phenomenon.
 

As for the problem that people face when grappling this self-awareness thing
- the sensation of our own self.
We can believe that these 'other people' are just highly complex systems,
but 'I am me'. It's hard to deal with that.

The problem here I believe is that because your internal model has such a
strong self-referal mechanism, total objectivity is extremely difficult.
It's analogous to the sensation of pain.
You know it's just a reaction in your head. You know lesser life forms
feel it (to varying degrees). But it's still not a trivial matter
to be objective about it when you feel it.
This is a consequence of how your internal model operates.

I am quite sure that it is possible to create a system (biological or
otherwise) that is equivelent to the human brain in all aspects but is
totally devoid of the type of strong dilema creating self-referal that
we tend to have.


DISCLAIMER
I can not say for certain that there is not something 'magical' about
human-type of consciousness that distinguishes it from systems that just
'act conscious' (i.e as Penrose would argue).
But equally I cannot say that there MUST be something magical about
human-type consciousness just because I personally have a strong personal
feeling of 'self'.
With no verifiable evidence for something 'magical' I have to be
conservative and primarily refer consciousness to observed behaviour of
systems in this very mechanistic way.

Still, my internal model is such that - even when faced with the cold
objective view that my existance is (most probably) ultimately meaningless
in human terms - I still behave as if my existance has meaning.
It is an extremely strong trait.
(Perhaps one advantagous to highly complex systems that have the
ability to discern their insignificance with respect to the Universe)

