Total Consciousness, I got that going for me.
Posted on 09/21/2023 7:40:33 PM PDT by FarCenter
A letter, signed by 124 scholars and posted online last week1, has caused an uproar in the consciousness research community. It claims that a prominent theory describing what makes someone or something conscious — called the integrated information theory (IIT) — should be labelled “pseudoscience”. Since its publication on 15 September in the preprint repository PsyArXiv, the letter has some researchers arguing over the label and others worried it will increase polarization in a field that has grappled with issues of credibility in the past.
“I think it’s inflammatory to describe IIT as pseudoscience,” says neuroscientist Anil Seth, director of the Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex near Brighton, UK, adding that he disagrees with the label. “IIT is a theory, of course, and therefore may be empirically wrong,” says neuroscientist Christof Koch, a meritorious investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Washington, and a proponent of the theory. But he says that it makes its assumptions — for example, that consciousness has a physical basis and can be mathematically measured — very clear.
There are dozens of theories that seek to understand consciousness — everything that a human or non-human experiences, including what they feel, see and hear — as well as its underlying neural foundations. IIT has often been described as one of the central theories, alongside others, such as global neuronal workspace theory (GNW), higher-order thought theory and recurrent processing theory. It proposes that consciousness emerges from the way information is processed within a ‘system’ (for instance, networks of neurons or computer circuits), and that systems that are more interconnected, or integrated, have higher levels of consciousness.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
https://psyarxiv.com/zsr78/
Consciousness Hunt Yields Results but not Clarity
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.adj4498
Total Consciousness, I got that going for me.
Materialist “scientists” just can’t allow themselves to admit that the answer to consciousness might lie beyond the reach of science, so as a result they just keep looking for answers in the wrong places. I’ve long said that “scientists” who refuse to acknowledge the possibility of the existence of God, and who try to use evolution as a materialistic answer to the origin of life, are like someone who misplaces their car keys inside their house, but is found outside searching for them under the streetlight. When questioned about why they’re out there when the keys must be in the house, they respond, “I know, but the light is better out here.”
No, it is just that our understanding of consciousness is immature.
It’s like the phlogiston theory of combustion and heat. The phlogiston theory was an advance beyond the classical theory of water, earth, fire and air that the alchemists used, but it was incorrect and discarded once the role of oxygen in exothermic chemical reactions was understood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory
Good points.
The structure of their logic is to first assume God doesn’t exist, then proceed with their imaginations.
What they seem to miss is that their first assumption has no empirical or logical basis.
It seems that they Kant quite understand what is going on.
It’s like the phlogiston theory of combustion and heat.
Materialists worship “science” precisely because they refuse to worship God, yet still thirst for answers to life’s endless mysteries. But science is not, as the materialists purport, the end all be all method of determining the nature of reality nor what is true. In fact, science is extremely limited because 1) it can only work with what can be observed within space-time and the matter contained within it, and 2) it can never answer the question of WHY the universe is as it is. Anything that might exist outside the observable universe, yet influence it in some way, is by definition beyond science’s reach. Therefore, appealing only to science to answer every big question will inevitably produce incorrect assumptions if (as I am confident is the case) the universe was created by and is influenced by forces outside space-time.
Our “science” is like the science of the goldfish confined to a goldfish bowl. His science is perfectly adequate to describe the atoms that make up the water that he swims in, and the water’s other physical properties, but it has no ability at all to explain the universe beyond the goldfish bowl. In fact, it can’t even explain how he and the water got into the bowl; heck, he doesn’t even know that he IS in a bowl in the first place - he thinks the bowl is the sum total of all that exists. I can imagine little fish evolutionists who try to use their observations of the material in the bowl to explain how the water came into existence and how the fish appeared spontaneously within it. They would, of course, have no knowledge of the human who filled the bowl and dropped the fish into the water, or if they had heard stories of him from fish “believers”, would dismiss such stories as “fairytales” and go back to studying the plastic plants inside the bowl.
If Planck is correct, then consciousness cannot be derived from matter and theories that propose to do so are bunkum.
Bfl
How does the goldfish develop any valid theories about the human who put him in the goldfish bowl or about anything else beyond the goldfish bowl.
We have a multitude of theories about what is beyond the observable universe. Which one is correct? How do we know?
Logic is no help. Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic geometries are all logically consistent, but different.
They don’t have a clue why we are conscious and it drives them batty.
“Looking for consciousness in parts of the human brain is like looking for the announcer in your radio.”
Leave it to the technocrats to describe something as profound and mysterious as human consciousness as a “system.” They just can’t help themselves, since if it is defined as a “system” then it can be controlled….by them!
They think that if they can control human consciousness they will be able to reproduce (or create) it. Their belief that they are god-like is real.
This “theory” - along with the AI narrative - is supposed to convince us that true technocracy is inevitable, that humans fall short and must be improved and updated. They have described - in other articles - a scenario where humans get what amount to software updates.
This is the world they are trying to create, and that’s the purpose of this “research.” But rather than be actual research, it is begun not with questions but with a predefined outcome. Then the “research” (always) manages to validate the outcome, however unsubstantial it may be.
Good analogy. In that case, the scientific research would lead to an understanding of the radio’s antenna and electronic circuits and establish that the signal carrying the announcer’s voice was an electromagnetic wave coming from a distant place.
We have not yet gotten to that point with respect to consciousness.
I agree with Planck and I’m glad he said that.
Einstein was so troubled by the phenomena of quantum entanglement that he referred to it as "spooky action at a distance" and refused to accept that it was real. Yet real it is.
With most of the universe consisting of so-called "dark energy" and "dark matter," there is plenty of room for consciousness to exist in a separate realm governed by physics that we barely glimpse at present. String theories propose that there are ten or more dimensions. Plausibly, consciousness resides in these extra dimensions that are beyond our senses.
A project of the Newton Institute currently underway has a large team of credentialed and trained hypnotherapists working to produce scientific proof that past life regression is true. If so, this would provide a glimpse into the realm of consciousness that is broadly consistent with both traditional religious beliefs and New Age thinking.
Over the years, I've greatly expanded my definition of what I consider to be 'conscious' by watching animal vids on youtube. Particularly cats. They are much better problem solvers than I ever thought. Also, many cats are true assholes that will actually make plans to mess up someone or something that pissed them off, and carry out multi-stage actions to accomplish their goals.
Anyone who calls them "dumb animals" hasn't been paying attention.
I don’t think that quantum experiments depend on consciousness.
They do depend on observations, i.e. measurements, but the measurements are made using scientific instruments, which are not conscious. What is important is that the quantum measurement is registered in a macroscopic instrument with sufficient mass to no longer be subject to quantum mechanics.
“Looking for consciousness in parts of the human brain is like looking for the announcer in your radio.”
The “follow the science” approach is to take apart the radio—one part at a time—and see when the announcer is silenced!
“electromagnetic wave coming from a distant place”
Modern science would call that place “woo”....
;-)
And THAT led to checking this 'new' perspective for it's properties, and I recalled hovering in the space above our house's central stair-well, with me flying next to ceiling and having to 'dip' at the room boundaries for the arches in the ceiling.
I haven't flown in any houses as an adult. But I got good at psychometry, or reading a person or object and describing facts about it to the owner. My brother married a Korean woman, and when I visited them once I 'read' her, and took her and my brother back to Korea when I described her school house and a lump of coal - the price of a child's day of education.
The death of my father was especially tough. We didn't speak out loud, but said our good-byes silently. When I saw him for the last time in the hospital, the Angel of Death was in the room. I knew that with dead certainty. He passed later that evening. I was sitting in his chair when the call came. That was when I recalled flying as a kid around the house while I was sleeping.
So is that multiple consciousness, or multiple perspectives of consciousness?
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