From: simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Simon Clippingdale)
Subject: Re: What is consciousness?
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Warwick University, England
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 12:12:57 GMT

In article <BeJ1TB1w165w@kalki33> kalki33!system@lakes.trenton.sc.us writes:
>isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak) writes:
>
>> >What is consciousness?
>
>> Before we answer this, it might help if you first answer a couple other
>> questions.  Namely:  What purpose will be served by having a definition?
>> And, Why are you dissatisfied with standard dictionary definitions?
>
> Well, consciousness is a real phenomenon, is it not?

`Consciousness' is a word, a *label* applied to what is a rather
complicated set of mental functions.

Yes, something real and physical clearly lies behind these functions,
as is obvious from the fact that they can be modified considerably by
the administration of drugs for example. But your apparent assumption
that consciousness is straightforward, and clearly delineated and
identified by its label, is unwarranted. You say later that science
needs to define what `consciousness' means (now, in effect). You have
this the wrong way round. Science needs to work with terms which are
clear and unambiguous, and if `consciousness' is not, then science
*should*not* use such a woolly term until it *is* well defined. The
meaning of `consciousness' should in effect change as science reveals
the phenomena behind this nebulous word (see below also).

This seems to be a major point of difference between creationists and
scientists: creationists, yourself included, draw spurious conclusions,
are misled, and even base entire theologies on the language, the labels.
This serves only to obfuscate the real issues. Science has to have precise
definitions so that labels can be unambiguous and so that definitions
do not change according to, or float on, linguistic usage and appeals
to intuition.

A good example of a statement which is vacuous through inadequate
precision is your next sentence. This stuff goes absolutely *nowhere*
toward increasing our understanding because it is a wordgame, and indeed
an appeal to intuition. It also smells distinctly of circularity, but
enough already.

> We know we are conscious, or self-aware.

[It keeps on like this; much deleted in order to address the following
specific example]

>> Seriously, death isn't such a great mystery as you make it out to be.  Heart
>> and lung function rely on a complicated arrangement of neutrons in the brain
>> (among other things).  All cells, including said neutrons, require heart
>> and lung to circulate blood to supply oxygen and nutrients.  When brain
>> function degrades past a certain point, heart or lungs falter, causing
>> oxygenation of the brain to falter, making heart and lungs fare even
>> worse, etc., causing a catastrophic failure of the entire system.
>
> We don't think that the death of the body is a mystery. We agree that
> certain symptoms are common to most dead bodies, at least after a
> certain time. Our question was not really about death, but about
> consciousness. In particular, we would like to know what science says
> about the fate of consciousness at the time of death and afterwards. And
> in order to say anything about this, science must have a definition of
> consciousness.
>
> It is a fact that if we are talking one minute to a living person and
> the next minute that person dies, we will know intuitively that
> there is something missing. We immediately think "he is gone". Who is
> "he"? The body is still there, but the person is gone. The self that
> was the object of awareness is gone. What was this self? Was it the
> beating of the heart. Was it the oxygen in the brain? Was it some
> combination of material elements? No, of course not.

Your example is self-defeating. If we are indeed talking one minute to
a living person who then appears to `lose consciousness', black out and
slump over the table, we do not immediately think "he is gone" (we cannot
*know* whether or not he is dead at this point). We think "Sh*t, what's
wrong with Fred? Is he OK? Check his pulse. Check his breathing". If these
are functioning apparently normally, we will be somewhat relieved and may
seek medical attention for him, but we will feel comforted that all the
*physical* vital signs are apparently OK, and we would expect him to
regain consciousness in due course.

While the consciousness of that person is temporarily gone, the person
is clearly *not* gone, and is expected to recover full function, including
consciousness, unless the problem turns out to be more serious.

I suggest you spend a Saturday evening in a bar full of UK undergrad
students. Loss of consciousness is neither rare, nor usually is it cause
to seek medical attention at all. It simply means that the part of the
software which looks after the higher functions of making bar conversation,
or making an asshole of oneself, has a glitch right now, because somebody
poured alcohol into the machinery.

> Evidently, consciousness is something very hard to understand.

Even more so if you mystify it, couch it in theological gobbledigook,
and make claims for it (terms like `eternal' and `transcendent' spring
to mind) which are utterly unsupported. But then the basis of religions
the world over is the creation of tortuous mysteries and the obstruction
of clear thought which can lead to understanding, and its replacement
with language (read babble) and unfalsifiable dogma. For example:

> Therefore it is truly a mystery; so much of a mystery in fact that
> science does not "officially" acknowledge its existence.

That'll be because all mention of it has been ruthlessly suppressed by
The Illuminati, no doubt. Perhaps you'd care to explain why campuses
and research institutes the world over are bristling with psychologists
and neurophysiologists trying to elucidate those higher mental functions.

>>> We would answer by saying that the soul, or the consciousness, has
>>> departed, and therefore the organism is no longer alive.
>> 
>> How can you say this if you don't know what consciousness is?
>
> We can say what consciousness is,

Well good, why don't you tell us so we can go away and do the
experiments to see if you're right? Or is this definition going
to include unfalsifiable gibberish like `transcendent' or `mystical'?

> but first we would like your opinion: what is it, what happens to
> it after death, and why?

I'm not going to define consciousness directly in three words or fewer,
because I don't think it is possible to do it in terms other than near-
synonyms such as awareness.

Evolution has left us with strong hardwired inclinations related to survival
and reproduction and, to this end, with neural machinery which enhances our
fitness by essentially detecting correlations in its sensory inputs, and by
building stereotypes and models on the basis of these correlations which
enable prediction, extrapolation, interpolation, estimation and the planning
of strategies on the basis of experience.

I believe that this whole gamut of functionality is lumped under the
ill-defined term `consciousness', not because it is one object which
is approriately identified by such a single label, but exactly because
we have the tendency I mentioned above to stereotype, and to pigeonhole,
especially when we know too little about a complicated matter to refine
and multiply our model stereotypes and their associated labels.

As to what happens to consciousness when we die, I suggest that it ceases
to operate in that all the mental functions which are lumped together under
the word cease to operate. If you have scientific evidence that it is other
than this way, I'm sure many people would like to hear it.

> Sincerely,
> Kalki Dasa

Cheers

Simon
-- 
Simon Clippingdale                simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk
Department of Computer Science    Tel (+44) 203 523296
University of Warwick             FAX (+44) 203 525714
Coventry CV4 7AL, U.K.
Newsgroups: talk.origins