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The quest for a definition of the term 'consciousness'
Hans Ricke
Saturday, 17 May 2008 08:55 UTC
Arnold chose this expression of a quest to refer to what I am doing elsewhere, in fact almost fulltime since a while.
And he also gave his own definition, which is a remarkable one :
“I suggest the following succinct definition:
Consciousness is a transparent phenomenal experience of the world from a privileged egocentric perspective."
My actual concern is the situation that no generally agreed upon definition or a set of definitions exists within the fields of science that are working on the phenomenon of consciousness. This missing definition could be a kind of minimal consensus, with very few properties, but even that does not seem to exist.
There are many different views on this matter:
Thomas Metzinger: – an ill-defined term
David Chalmers: – we need more definitions
Christof Koch: – we just need a rough definition
Max Velmans: – we follow the common usage in which the term “consciousness” is synonymous with “awareness” or “conscious awareness”
Andrew Brook: – It is unlikely that consciousness studies will ever achieve a sound scientific footing with such an imprecise and ungainly conceptual toolbox
( these statements – Chalmers and Koch – not to be taken literally, but from how I remember the talks )
My idea that a well founded group of veteran consciousness researchers should be locked up like in a ‘conclave’ until they have come up with some sensible agreement has not been entirely embraced, which may be due to many reasons.
I still think this task is overdue and the current situation is almost embarrassing and it is the obligation of those people who want to establish a science of consciousness.
So getting back to Arnold’s definition I do not think it is possible to find wider agreement upon a definition like that. Also I believe a process of definition will need a longer determined effort, in which properties will be included others will be excluded. As long as there is not even undisputed wether consciousness is a real or an illusiory phenomenon, as long as there is still unlclear wether consciousness is only receptive or as well active, we are facing quite some task, but I think it is worth going for it.
references:
Max Velmans on Defining Consciousness
Andrew Brook on Terminology of Consciousness
John Searle on Consciousness
Thomas Metzinger on The Problem of Consciousness
Robert van Gulick on Consciousness
Rocco Gennaro on Consciousness
David M. Rosenthal on Concepts and Definitions of Consciousness
Please note this:
Hi all,
even though there were some interesting new turns last week, we have decided to lock this thread for several reasons. We may reopen it when the special edition of the Journal of Consciousness Studies covering this topic is out.
Meanwhile the thread stays locked and pinned. If you want to continue certain lines of thought please open a new thread for this.
Yours friendly
Hans
Updated 07 April 2009 06:50 UTC
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This topic has been locked by the forum moderators.
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Dear Chris,
certainly meaning is there long before communication starts happening ( from an evolutionary or developmental point of view ). It is by far more essential to consciousness than communication, which of course is relevant for higher order theories of consciousness.
Also action control is more essential than communication.Please keep in mind what this thread is about.
Yours friendly
Hans -
Dear Arnold,
let me reply to your clarification here:“Consciousness emerged in the course of evolution because it enhanced adaptive action in a complex and uncertain world.”
Do you agree that in a preliminary and basic and unified definition of consciousness it is not possible to embrace both options of emergence versus e.g. panpsychism?
Would we need an alternative definition or rather avoid addressing this aspect?I think that this matter can not be settled by evidence at this point. I also wonder if your position implies that consciousness is reducible. In that case there would maybe be more objections from e.g. Chalmers.
Yours friendly
Hans -
Dear Arnold,
thanky you for posting a revised version of your definition:“Consciousness is that activated part of the cognitive brain which manifests for its owner a transparent, coherent representation of the world from the owners privileged egocentric perspective.”
I see some difficulties for a preliminary and basic and unified definition. The term cognitive brain is your term and may not be accepted by others, do you see a chance to formulate this in a more general way?
Moreover consciousness may not only happen in the brain.
I think the ‘activated part’ has good chances, because activation is an essential aspect of consciousness, it is also clear that consciousness is not the whole of a human being.
The next difficult term I suspect will be ‘transparent’. It does not suggest many people would agree on that one.
The ‘manifestation of a representation for its owner’ will not give rise to much objection I hope, I can imagine though that there maybe be other expressions of the same view. This applies similarily to ‘coherent’.
‘Of the world’ should in my opinion be specified into inner and outer world, because I see major differences in how we experience the outer world and the inner world.
I still have difficulties with your attributes to our perspective: ‘privileged’ and ‘egocentric’.
The first needs to be asserted why it is essential. Egocentric is not controversial, I just have difficulties with that expression, because it is used in general in a much biased way. Not to doubt that every human being has an individual perspective. This perspective is subject to constant change even, because we are living beings. Egocentric brings in psychological notions such as selfishness, prejudice etc. which are not essential to consciousness imo.I really like this definition because ( obviously ) it resembles my medical view of the human organism and how it functions. It has many parts that I believe are essential for a definition.
I am curious how it stands to challenges…
Yours friendly
Hans -
Hans, you wrote:
“[meaning] is by far more essential to consciousness than communication, which of course is relevant for higher order theories of consciousness”
IMHO you have this arse-about. The categories of meaning come out of the neurological/cognitive realms and seed the emotional and on to to the symbolic/metaphoric. This leads into a developing sense of AWARENESS but lacking resolution power to move to the level of being aware of awareness.
IOW Consciousness comes out of this dynamic – emotional communication in ‘lower’ life forms utilises the categories derived from self-referencing by the neurology and sensory systems – the categories are what is SAME across all sensory differences. The SYMMETRIC foundations elicit a growing focus on asymmetry in the form of mediation dynamics and HIGH resolution power allows for the emergence of personal consciousess and so our unique nature as compared to our particular/general nature of our species nature.
The neural COMPLEXITY allows for finer and finer distinctions and the connection of such into an emergent sense of awareness of being aware. This is not the same as neuron quantity. Consciousness, being associated with mediation, comes out of relational space and so out of relational interactions as communicated through language – IOW understanding comes out of using the ‘right’ words etc and that is a task involving the asymmetric properties of consciousness that allows for the making and the breaking of symmetries.
You can look at this from a derivatives perspective where we have position that gives us velocity (first derivative) that gives us acceleration (send derivative) that some take further to the notion of action (as mentioned in your post – For this are see the works of Arthur Young) – The hierarchy in this is obvious, as are the differences in hierarchy where the syntactic precision is rigid, pyramid/tree-like and semantic precision is softer, flatter, network/web-like (nested hierarchy with an focus on trust; syntax lack trust and so imposes rigid order)
The mediation categories I have presented cover the set of all POSSIBLE descriptions of consciousness where all definitions will show roots in the generic categories presented. Self-referencing gives us finer details and allows for local context to customise further through amplification or damping or expunging the universal categories. All of this fits in with your interpretation of what this thread is about.
Chris
Categories of Mediation -
Dear Hans,
In response to your questions:
1. I agree that the options of emergence and panpsychism are incompatible. I don’t believe that panpsychism is a sound scientific option, but I wouldn’t want to argue the point on this forum.
2. You ask if consciousness is reducible. If by “reducible” you mean can consciousness be constituted by a biophysical state/process, then I would say that consciousness is reducible. Otherwise I would have to say that I simply don’t know what you mean. As for objections from others (e.g., Chalmers), I don’t think it is possible to take a position on such matters without some objections.
3. I take it as self-evident that the cognitive brain is that part of the brain that specifically enables cognition and must include the functions of consciousness. Why should this be a problem?
4. There is no scientific evidence that I am aware of that consciousness happens anywhere else but in the brain.
5. The difference between a representation and a transparent representation is that the subject is aware of the content of a representation as a representation, but is not aware of the content of a transparent representation as a representation. So a transparent representation of the world manifests the content of the world as reality rather than as a mere representation.
6. I use the term coherent as a concise qualifier to indicate that any occurrent conscious experience is a globally unified experience.
7. The inner world (within the body) and the outer world (outside of the body) are both integral parts of the world. The fact that we experience them differently is a matter that belongs with many other kinds of different phenomenal experiences. Trying to include these issues within a single definition, I think, would unnecessarily encumber any definition.
8. In the context of a scientifically useful definition of consciousness, the term egocentric has a particular meaning. Folk notions such as selfishness are not relevant here.
I don’t think any definition of consciousness can be completely free of theoretical bias. The question is whether it can be helpful in advancing the scientific study of consciousness.
Best,
Arnold
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Dear Arnold,
let me reply to 7. first.
If you refer to the inner of the body as the inner world, that is by far too limited.
Much more relevant is the inner of the mind, e.g. thinking. If we would quantify the space thoughts take compared to visual and auditive content of consciousness, say during a normal day of a healthy person, we would probably find major differences in populations depending on their culture. A typical US metropolitan will have more thoughts in his consciousness than an aboriginal in the amazon rainforest.
If you then say it encumbers the definition to differentiate between inner and outer world, I would insist, that this is not encumbering but pointing out an essential property of consciousness.
And I am all for countermeasures against encumbering: this whole thread and what I do most of the time these days is an effort against emcumbrance. I would rather say bringing in terms like transparency, coherency, egocentricity and cognition which have to be themselves carefully defined means encumbering.
And that is just what you bring in. When you look at what everybody else brings in from Antonio Damasio to Gerald Edelman via Daniel Dennett you name them all… then you know what emcumbrance means. To ‘disencumber’ regarding the current situation brings up the name of Augias right away!We need to look for what is essential and find a way to address with the simplest expressions using the most easily communicable terms.
I think to address the content of consciousness is essential and I see three different categories of content that are probably very different in their nature, so they should be inculded in a definition: 1. the outer world, 2. the inner world and 3. consciousness itself.
3. is the most peculiar property of consciousness in my opinion. It is indeed remarkable that we are capable of knowing that we are aware by means of a direct experience.
The way we experience our mind is so different from how we experience the outer world that it also deserves its own category: it is absolutely private and not fully reportable and thus its intersubjectivity is limited.
Most probably that is one of the reasons why current research is not addressing it as it should be and rather focusses on vision.Yours friendly
Hans -
Dear Hans,
I see two major issues arising out of your project.Firstly, a decision has to be made about whether consciousness is purely about what is involved in input – sensorium, phenomenal experience, awareness or however we wish to describe it – or whether, as Alfredo would like, it implies response, output or action, including invisible actions such as mental arithmetic or indeed any form of ‘thinking’. Like you, I believe we should use the definition found in the major dictionaries and in most applied biomedical contexts, which is purely of having an input or experience. This may bring in visual saccades and ‘internal motor simulations’, but not ‘voluntary output’ however one might define that. I respect Alfredo’s arguments but I think we would achieve a lot if we agreed to stick to the conventional definition. It would avoid a huge amount of confusion.
Secondly, there is a dichotomy between the physical or dynamical processes that are necessary for an experience and the experience itself. These belong to two completely different sorts of description and we will make little headway until there is a general appreciation of how different these descriptions are and how necessary it is to all scientific explanation to have two different sorts of description. There is no dualism here, just a recognition that all explanations involve the comparison of two complementary descriptions – the dynamic and the actual – the hypothesis and the observation that tests it. Muddle them up and you get mayhem – which is what we have had so far. It is a bit like confusing ‘music’ in the sense of that experienced, with ‘music’ in the sense of the profession of playing an instrument. It is not viable for me to try to expand here in detail but the gist is in my most recent JCS paper, as you know. If we can simply make clear which sort of description we are dealing with at any point in an analysis I believe we will come up for air and see where to move forward.
Very best
Jo Edwards
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Dear Hans
“I think that this matter can not be settled by evidence at this point. I also wonder if your position implies that consciousness is reducible. In that case there would maybe be more objections from e.g. Chalmers.”
A scientific paradigm for consciousness that is generally accepted and useful will make the definition to some measure redundant. At this stage it appears a rough working definition will suffice as per Koch.
Now a solution requires dealing with Chalmer’s hard problem if it is to be satisfying.
I attach below an abstract to a poster I submitted at a recent Tucson conference as a valid philosophical position to take for the reducibility of consciousness“David Chalmers states the hard problem of consciousness eludes conventional methods of explanation. The problem the qualia argument poses for a reductionist theory of consciousness relates to the inherent circularity of the question. Why does red have the quality or feel of red is an illogical question, albeit not an illegitimate one. The history of science shows us it does not provide answers to this class of question. My favourite analogy is the radical conceptual change forced by Einstein’s theory of relativity. One would not deny it the status of reductionist theory yet intuitively it does not solve the qualia-type issue of why mass should possess an intrinsic force called gravity. Nor does it undermine the pursuit of a theory of everything in quantum terms. The level of explanation is in practice unencumbered by such accusations of an explanatory gap. Thus, the objective of a scientific level of explanation should not or cannot conform to the existence of a phenomenological event which evokes in many ways a sense of its meaning. (This is not to say that it is not meaningful). Science is not creationist. The quality of red is a given observation or datum in the same way gravity is. It should explain, however, what consciousness is, its relation to the self-identity of the organism and predict the necessary and sufficient conditions to this end. This is not the same as a neural correlate of consciousness, but a theory of what endows a neural network with this property. To put the debate in context we are currently at a pre-paradigmatic stage of scientific enquiry. Thomas Kuhn observes the pertinence of philosophical objection at this stage of a scientific revolution. Do we take history as a guide and expect the science of consciousness to normalize in due course?”
What will a theory look like or how do we measure its success? To some extent it will become a useful paradigm. It will provide solutions to organization of the visual hierarchy, a fundamental understanding of neurological conditions like unilateral neglect, and psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia and the changes in conscious states associated with them.
Costa
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Dear Jonathan:
Many thanks for your position message. I think it bends the curve to Hans’ side, but this is no problem for me, since I believe in Nash’s theorem that in a fair cooperative game all players can win. We are all getting benefits to our research area, when making clear different positions. Basically, it seems that we arrived at three positions:
a) consciousness is simple sentience;
b) consciousness is meaningful sentience;
c) consciousness is meaningful sentience that is used to control action.
Curiously, the second is built upon the first, and the third is built upon the second, but the third is more restrictive than the second and the second is more restrictive than the first one. For instance, the first definition allows while the third surely rules out plant consciousness. If I am not misrepresenting your hypothesis, the second position fits better single cell consciousness, since the cell (neuron) not only receives an input but also reacts selectively and coordinates its signaling pathways to respond coherently to it. Maybe in this regard neurons are more sophisticated than sensitive cells of plants.
If Marcelo Petraglia is reading this post, I would like to hear about his experiments with plant sensitivity to sounds/music (if he is not, I will make a telephone call…).Best Regards
Alfredo Pereira Jr.
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Alfredo,
I worry about the way you summarize our suggested definitions:
“a) consciousness is simple sentience;
b) consciousness is meaningful sentience; c) consciousness is meaningful sentience that is used to control action."The definition of “meaning” is as problematic as the definition of consciousness. Also, “sentience” itself implies a state of consciousness. We want to avoid circularity as much as possible. If a definition is to be useful, it must put some qualifications/constraints on what might count as a valid theory of consciousness. We cannot expect full agreement on any given set of qualifications. There will always be dissenting opinions.
Best,
Arnold
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