Giulio Tononi on Consciousness

[@rwhirsch]

How do 2 conscious entities celebrate? HIGH PHI!!!

[@NikolaiRogich]

I just cannot understand how the professor does not acknowledge Kant as the originator of this theory. He almost directly quotes The Critique of Pure Reason more than once.

[@DarkePacific]

Because Kant didn't put in the work to develop all the axioms and computational concepts that are the core of IIT? Pretty obvious, Tononi deserves to get all the credit if you ask me.

[@ihossi22]

@nikolairogich , Donald Hoffman's theory of consciousness is a better representation of Kant's philosophy in my opinion. I had a harder time seeing Kant's philosophy in this lecture. Check out Hoffman's work if you haven't seen it.

[@sukorileakbatt294]

"it is what it is.." - Neuroscientist on Consciousness. #LoveIt

[@russellfeecrouch6136]

What it is...the best way ever to say hi

[@donakavite8286]

Yes. Until we can adequately explain how to get subjects from objects, the hard problem will continue to exist. But with science, we can study subject in relation to object and find the solution.

[@phills6732]

Oh look, the bridge between science and spirituality. Been up for almost 5 years and barely 30k views. Nice.

[@130guenda]

what a shame that the whoever filmed this just put the camera fixed and doesn't show us the board on which Tononi explains things. Poor.

[@Hgulix62]

Yep

[@brookshamilton1]

Agree. Kills half the presentation.

[@loriclark505]

I love him ,it is science not spooky crap

[@noneofourfinbusiness]

I have a general interest in the study of consciousness. While I am a software developer, I have no specific skills in this area. As a laymen I find this top down approach to be very fruitful. As I understand it, IIT is not trying to explain reality, but rather to simply develop a usefull model. On that account it looks very interesting. I am very willinging to accept that human/animal consciousness and/or self awarness and/or cognition is not uniques in the universe, or unique to what we call biological creatures. So if a hot plate with the correct type of circuits just happens to have some limited consciousness, so be it. Its kinda cool actually. I have long intuited that consciousness is simply what thinking feels like. Autopoietic systems are cool as hell, so if consciousness just happens to be a feeling or reflection of the operation of that system, then great. It just means that when I use the term "I" what i am refering to my whole material self, not the little voice in my head that simply feels immaterial. Ok enough rambling, my beer is getting warm. ...but if anyone has instructions for making a high phi device outta a rasberry pi, please share link, I could use another pet :)

[@namero999]

Unfortunately, this is circular reasoning. At best, it's moving the goalpost without providing any insight. Let's say that we provisionally accept your "consciousness is simply (cit) what thinking feels like", then now the question is explaining the feeling.

[@davidchisholm6514]

​@@namero999I am not so sure about that. We have the word 'hunger' to describe a specific feeling associated with low nutrition levels. If that is circular, then pretty much all words are. Especially when in the case of consciousness. Many people have theories of other realms interfacing with the material in some mystical process. And that consciousness is the initiator. In the context describing consciousness as simply and internal state reflection seems to do some work.

[@namero999]

@@davidchisholm6514 the point here is that we are describing a thing in terms of itself, so saying "consciousness is feeling" is equivalent to say "consciousness is consciousness" or "feeling is feeling". We have 2 options, either it's emergent, and we then have to explain its causal relationship in terms of something else, or it's ontic. So far, we have no clue of how to even begin to approach the former...

[@davidchisholm6514]

@@namero999 I still disagree. While it is not an "complete answer" it goes in the right direction. When my body is low in nutrition I am hungry, when my body tempurate drops below a certain threshold I am cold, when a portion of my brain is working I am conscience. When my body has enough nutrition I am not hungry, when a portion of my brain is not working, I am unconscience. I think that is a giant step in the right direction for those that describe mind as wholly seperate from body. Lets see what work this notion does. No brain, no conscienous. Obvious to many, but definitly not all people. My body as a whole system evaluates inputs and initiates action, that sensation I feel as consciousness comes after the brain process we call thinking, not before imho. "we then have to explain its causal relationship in terms of something else" Right so this is the hard problem of hunger then? I agree that describing hunger as the self-awareness of the state of being low nutrition still leaves the question of what self-awareness is. However, it does seem to make it clear that feeling hungry does NOT put you in a state of low nutrition. So for me, the notion does work.

[@FQxI]

Sorry, slides are unavailable for this talk.

[@danielf9110]

Can we ask Giulio to provide the slides so a proper video can be edited?

[@FQxI]

Sorry - we tried that. Slides unavailable.

[@PoliticalJohn]

Didn't he mention that they were available online early in the video? Perhaps it was to the papers he referenced. Great presentation, quite fast! Will watch again.

[@SolaceEasy]

Disservice

[@nickblood7080]

He’s explaining the matrix trilogy

[@spruce117]

Consciousness is just a series of tubes!

[@lettersquash]

That's numberwang! An alternative axiom to consider is that our intuitions about almost everything have been shown (by physical analysis of systems) to be extremely unreliable, so this method of beginning with "axioms" of what we think consciousness is like, then projecting that onto physical systems seems unwise. Axioms of matter - if we worked from this principle - might include that it has no space in it (obviously - that's why it hurts when I hit my head on the wall). It seems like we live on a flat plane with the sun going across from one horizon to the other. Iron pyrite seems like gold. It seems like we have "unitary" consciousness, and it seems like "it is what it is, no more, no less".

[@andreabaragiola9321]

Is that a mitchell and webb reference? Im so proud of this community

[@__Henry__]

I think one point that validates his use of intuition is that experience itself is a uniquely undeniable character (even if you're a transcendental monist, I don't think you can deny that the individual doesn't exist, it's just that the whole also exists). So then what, if anything, can be posited in description of experience, generally. From this, he posits four additional vague axioms. Another validating point may be that all self-evident statements (axioms) carry with them some degree of arbitrary assumption. How safe or risky he was in positing these particular axioms, I suppose that depends on your own critique for what he and colleagues have come up with. Reading the postulates in the paper on which Tononi is presenting, they seem reasonably conservative to me (although vague). But I hear you, the axioms are assumptions, and with assumption there is room for descriptive error. Even the truth of very "simple" things can elude us via a broken frame of reference. I think the point is that he is actually trying out this strategy, from generality working inward. The reframings of the mystery in context of all claims, more or less false, are where real the philosophical work is done rather than the outright rejection or collection of philosophies.

[@lettersquash]

@@__Henry__ Thanks. I don't know enough about either philosophy or cognition to do your comment justice, and watching this video again I'm amazed I commented at all - I hardly understood any of it (partly because of the crazy rush to give a very condensed overview, I hope!) - I might have a better grasp of it if I read the paper(s) and other discussion of the theory. I take your point, if I've understood it, however, that we can't really escape axioms, and they all entail risks of error. Tononi presents a range of experimental results that show he might be onto something, and empirical evidence is the only real validation of anything, to my mind. Actually, I think we can perhaps escape axioms, or approach that condition, but we do so asymptotically through emprical evidence gathering. (I know it's common to say we must take at least the basic principles of logic or maths as givens, but I think even these are empirically derived.)

[@__Henry__]

@@lettersquash Yes I think you've interpreted me well. And I'd agree at least in pragmatism that empirical evidence is pretty much the most valuable validation of whatever, but I might disagree on escaping axioms. To be clear, I see IIT as a super speculative framework so the experimental "support" he provides seems to me very loosely fitting rather than being ground for making specific claims. Hakwan Lau has influenced my views on IIT. If you're interested in more you can read that here in his blog: inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2017/08/how-to-make-iit-and-other-theories-of.html inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2017/12/more-on-iit-and-assc-our-annual.html inconsciousnesswetrust.blogspot.com/2018/12/in-defense-of-iit-resolution-for-2019.html

[@lettersquash]

@@__Henry__ Well, that was very useful! Hakwan Lau's posts introduced me to several more concerns about IIT, and the Adam Pautz piece linked to from there seemed to underline how removed this phi calculation is from some of the simplest observations of consciousness philpapers.org/archive/PAUWII.pdf So my intuition at the moment says this is all a big waste of time, but I remind myself that I simply don't have the mathematical or any other expertise to make a proper judgement. It seems likely that the integration of information across the brain can affect the quality of our consciousness, but this may just be one aspect of the phenomenon - hence, when this is abstracted and applied without consideration of other details, we arrive at bizarre, counterintuitive results. The whole field seems confused, to be honest, which I put down to wide acceptance of Chalmers' "hard problem", which, I blieve, covertly implies a duality, even though Chalmers and others who take this starting point say they are physical monists. For there to be an explanatory gap from "objective" to "subjective" leads us into an ancient mental habit, I think, of constructing a model of the self (essentially as non-physical, but we fail to notice) where all the computation or whatever has to be delivered. If one is truly a physicalist, the hard problem cannot exist: there are just a heck of a lot of what he ironically calls "easy" problems. The same issue seems to be there in Penrose and Hameroff's Orch-OR, although that annoys me even more. Penrose makes the most ridiculous statements about the human ability to "understand", compares it ignorantly with the capacities of computers, and arrives at the proposition that consciousness can't be computation, from which point Hameroff apparently contacted him and sold him the idea that the magic happens in quantum collapse in brain microtubules. Personally, I think this is all going in the wrong direction. I think consciousness is almost certainly computational, and I think it is probably a diverse set of "outputs" (or simply conditions) the brain makes available to other parts of the system in all manner of complex ways. I suspect it doesn't require any more connective complexity than the brain's at the level of neural pathways, although if it employs some quantum tricks (like photosynthesis or bird navigation) that will be an important thing to discover, another of the "easy" things. The thing we endlessly struggle with is that it's all physics, that the self is physics in action. I've started writing a series on my blog about consciousness if you're interested. Your input has really helped, thanks again. lettersquash.wordpress.com/2020/06/30/natural-consciousness-part-2-being/

[@EinSofVirtuoso]

The underlying philosophy that would provide sound grounding for this view may be by Xavier Zubiri’s Sentient intelligence.

[@terencedavid3146]

By consciousness Guilio Tononi means experience, however, that might not necessarily be true. That is Tononi's personal & subjective definition to the best of his knowledge and understanding. However, it should be noted that both experience and consciousness are fundamentally different things and absolutely cannot and should not used as synonyms, one for the other. EXPERIENCE: To experience something, firstly there has to be an object, for example the phone in you hand, then there has to be one (or more) of the senses, the eyes in this case, then and only only is experience possible. The basic, yet simple formula for experience is this... Object + sense = experience. A: Sound + ear = experience B: Taste + tongue = experience. C: Smell + nose = experience Even subtle things like ideas, thoughts, memories etc etc are subject to the same principle. D: Idea + mind = experience. Now consciousness is the sub stratum, or primary field within which all things are experienced. It's object + sense + experience .. ALL in consciousness. It would be preposterous to say something like .. I experienced A, B, C & D but I was not conscious. Rather, I was conscious of my experience of A,B,C & D or in my consciousness A,B, C, & D were phenomena, this is the factual reality behind experience n consciousness. Consciousness first.

[@harrycrosswell2844]

I think you're getting caught up in the langauge surrounding consciousness (which always gets a bit confusing). Experience, awareness, consciousness, what it is like to be you. All of these are the same thing. You can be aware of experiences A - D. You can experience experiences A - D. You can be conscious of experiences A - D. There is something that it is like to experience A - D. Language makes this inherently tricky. It's why he focus's on phenomonology. You are no different from each experience due to being the sum of all current experiences. I suppose if you're considering consciousness as a field, then experiences would be fluctations or variables within the field. These variables and fluctations would be both contained within the field whilst being the field (or at least part of it). I'm not really sure how you are decoupling consciousness from experience in such a way that ensures consciousness must proceed experience. Every conscious moment is a moment of experience, even if that experience is meditating, thoughtless in total sensory deprivation. There is something that it is like to be that absense of other experience. Darkness and silence are both valid experiences.

[@terencedavid3146]

@@harrycrosswell2844 I feel quietly confident and clear on the etymology and what actually constitutes experience, awareness and consciousness. Firstly, they aren't the same thing as you seem to thinkand there's certainly no confusion in my mind regarding the subtle but distinct differences between them. Being aware of experience is correct, ✅️ awareness precedes experience. Your preposterous notion of experience experiences just doesn't make sense linguistically nor experientially. One experiences. Period. Nobody in their right mind ever says "I experience my experiences". I understand the intricacies of the English language, as i do the limitations of language. Besides English I am fluent in both Hindi and Bengali. Your incorrect notion and I quote you.. "you are no different from your experience".. you experience you mobile phone in your hand, by your FUZZY LOGIC you are no different from the phone you experience in your hand. Lol. You experience your mum, your dad, your home, your wife etc etc...That would make you your mum, your dad your home and your wife all rolled into one..🤔 hmmm. Ridiculous. Yes one is certainly shaped by one's environment and experiences, but to say definitively and conclusively that one IS one's experiences is incorrect understanding and needs remedying. My understanding of consciousness is informed by the 5000 year old Vedic tradition of Advaita Vedanta or non dual philosophy. This system postulates that "CONSCIOUSNESS" IS primary and fundamental and IS who and what we really are. Consciousness IS NOT an emergent property of the brain or mind. This system stresses that... YOU ARE NOT YOUR BODY, YOU ARE NOT YOUR MIND. Nor are you anything you experience. This is a radical departure from anything you have learned in Westen materialistic science and philosophy. We are "CONSCIOUSNESS" having an experience. We experience the body, the mind and all external and internal phenomena and by the above logic .. "anything that you experience you are NOT. I hope you get it but if you don't, then tough. In modern scientific language, consciousness might be considered as "the field" within which all experiences are perturbations or excitations in the field. I must stop now.

[@harrycrosswell2844]

​@@terencedavid3146 Haha that's quite the message. It's refreshing to see someone so passionate about this subject. I'm rather busy as I came across this, I read this in my break. I'll try to remember to come back to this. If you reply to this I should be notified which will jog my memory. I will say that on first reading I still believe your views surrounding this are being distorted due to the failures of language when attempting to define consciousness. You say 'one experiences', but where is this one? Who is the one doing the experiences? Where are they? Don't we also experience one? So is one an experience or that which experiences? Is there a difference? I tend to think 'one' or selfness is simply another experience. I appreciate this isn't a full answer. Please keep up the convo if you read this. As I said, I will make it back to the prior comment when I have time. This conversation intrigues me.

[@terencedavid3146]

@@harrycrosswell2844I quote you.."you "beLIEve" that my views on this subject are distorted due to the failures of language"...🤔 hmmm. Let's unpack your statement.. Firstly, notice the word LIE in the word beLIEve. Be careful what u believe, coz what u believe might just be a LIE, yet u believe it.. Also and for obvious reasons not everything you believe is true. You may believe that you're the coolest, smartest, most generous dude around but is that really true ??. What u believe is of little value, it's what you really, really know that matters. Surely your employers pay u far what u know, not for what u believe. Now onto the second part, your remark "failures of language"... language doesn't fail, it's people who fail at language. It's seems a case of a bad carpenter blaming his tools... Yes, I appreciate that language can and does have it's limitations, but "failure" is always on the part of the one using language, not of language itself. I get that you have many unanswered questions on consciousness, the true nature of reality, the Self etc etc.. For all your queries and more, i strongly recommend swami Sarvapriyananda on all matters relating to consciousness. Also, take in a bit of Manly P Hall, Jiddu Krishnamurthy, Alan Watts and Bill Donahue. 👊🏼✌🏼☝🏼❤

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

@@terencedavid3146 When I ponder my self I am clearly aware that my self is a thought inextricably linked with a body. I am not consciousness. I am conscious. My self is conscious. 'Consciousness' is a very misleading word for it induces people to think of consciousness as a 'something' (with an existential status at least that of matter). Self evidently, being conscious is a process and since process is an abstract notion so is the being-conscious-process. When my self is conscious my self is conscious of this or of that but when my self is conscious of nothing my self simply is not conscious. And when my self is not conscious my self is not existent. Being conscious and being a self are not identical though they are practically indistinguishable. Neither has temporal or functional priority and there can't be one without the other. The self is the thought that is about its self and is the essential component in the being-conscious-process. Thoughts are not the things they are about. Thoughts merely represent those things. Representations can be instantiated in coded form by neural discharge timing patterns and these are able to adjust each other via the synapses. Being conscious is the synaptic modulation of the self thought. Thoughts are representations intermodulating each other via the synapses in the process called thinking.

[@MrMitras18]

The questions about "I" that are hardly asked (read patiently): - Q1: Who am I? Do I know myself? How well do I know myself? Since when do I know myself? With whom was I acquainted first, myself or the world? Who has the answer if I don't? Q2: Why am "I", the I that I am? If I am "this", why am " I" this? Why somebody else or something else is not "this"? And why am "I" not somebody else or something else? Who has the answer if I don't? Q3: Have "I" always been the "I" that I am? If not, since when am "I", the I that I am now? Who or what was I, immediately before " I" became the I, that I am now? And who or what was "that I" before it became "that"/ "him"? If "I" have changed, have I changed entirely? If not, what in me has not changed? If there is something in me that has not changed, has it always been what it has been? Who has the answer if I don't? Q4: Am I awake? Since when am I awake? How do I know that I am awake? Before waking up did I know that I was not awake? Where was I before I woke up? Where was I after I fell asleep? Where was I when I was dreaming? Where was I when I was asleep and not dreaming? When did I wake up for the first time? Where was I before that? When did I fall asleep for the first time? And where was I before that? Who was I after I fell asleep? Who was I before I woke up? Who was I when I was dreaming? Who was I when I was neither awake nor dreaming? And who in me dreams dreams? Do I know him? How well do I know him? Since when do I know him? And since when is he dreaming? Where is he now? Is he still dreaming? Or am I still dreaming? Who has the answer if I don't?

[@michaelaturner9382]

MrMitras18 Really great questions. I read them patiently. And copied them feverishly. 😉

[@dougerhard2128]

Start with What IS "I?" Then on to What AM I? Then Who am I?

[@Joshua-dc1bs]

I believe that Vedantic philosophies hold the "I" thought to be illusory.

[@kyjo72682]

Q1 - Your identity at any given moment is fully defined by the sum of information which is coming to (being integrated in) your consciousness at that specific moment. This information is composed of 3 main categories. 1) sensory input - vision, hearing, smell, touch, hunger, pain, emotions, etc. 2) information currently being recalled from memory and 3) information coming from the part of your brain that creates imagination (model of external world and predictions of what might happen in it). So "you" are the part of your brain that receives all these different types of information integrated into a single whole - the experience. Q2 - Simple answer: somebody has to do it. :) Somebody has to do the work of experiencing exactly your experience. That somebody is "you". [More complicated answer may come from application of the anthropic principle and related concepts. Basically just based on the fact that you are having some experience you can say that all conditions necessary for you to have that specific experience - the physical laws, chemical and biological evolution, all of human history, leading all the way up to you at this very moment - have to be fulfilled. Otherwise you wouldn't be experiencing this moment. So it kind of doesn't make sense to ask "why?".] Q3 - Identity is changing with time. New experiences and memories are being formed at every "observer moment". Technically you at this moment are a different individual from you a second ago (or a minute from now). The part of identity which stays more or less the same are the long-term memories. In a wider sense the ability to recall a continuous record of your past life is a requirement to forming a proper identity. Q4 - Too many questions. Generally you can be partially "awake" during your dreams but there is no input from the outside world (from senses). All information comes from imagination and memories. Most of the time there is no ability to form new memories which means that your dreamy self mostly won't be a part of your awake self.

[@nimim.markomikkila1673]

@@Joshua-dc1bs It depends; both a self-realized person and non-awakened person uses the word "I".

[@david203]

I hold out hope for a unification between an intellectual (more or less objective) understanding of consciousness and the nondual or "spiritual" (more or less subjective) understanding of consciousness. Very effective paths to the recognition and stabilization of consciousness already exist in categories such as meditation and nondual philosophy. What we need now is clearer seeing of a unified goal for objective and subjective fields of study that somehow doesn't exclude science, spirituality, self-development, or religion, which are but a few of the fields that could benefit from a deeper understanding of consciousness.

[@wasseemzaher]

How do I become an FQXi member? How do I get an invitation to FQXi conference?

[@__Henry__]

Use google, man

[@gozzilla78]

Oh, you can only if you have your own grand unified theory of matter, consciousness and the cosmos. And throw in God for good measure.

[@wasseemzaher]

@@gozzilla78 Assuming I do, how do I join and/or get an invitation to attend/speak at a conference)?

[@dannyteebone9233]

Even consciousness has a steep price tag

[@nimim.markomikkila1673]

If they get the result that there is no phi in deep sleep, I suspect the phi is rather measuring contents of consciousness of a conscious being, who don´t have contents, but is has concsciousness in deep sleep. That is at least some of the results from sleep-labs where people have been woken up from deep sleep, and asked right away, "do you remember anything?" They often do remember being aware of something very abstract...

[@__Henry__]

I suspect something of this sort as well; I wonder of Tononi's potential conflation of consciousness and content (which within IIT may be a very useful measure of what is consciously accessed). But Tononi said phi is split into lesser islands during deep sleep, so like a 'split up,' 'lesser' consciousness in NREM rather than a complete absence.

[@martinwilliams9866]

Consciousness doesn't disappear when we sleep, otherwise we couldn't forget our dreams. Also the brain isn't just made up of neurons, there's even more Glial cells in it, which have more mutual reflexivity via the transverse Hall effect.

[@Freddy18w]

Can I get a copy of the slides, please?

[@FQxI]

We try and put most slides on our site: fqxi.org/conference. Though I'm afraid it doesn't look like with have Giulio's up: fqxi.org/conference/talks/2016

[@weirdsciencetv4999]

Does Tononi ever go into the history of how he came up with the axioms? I have gathered bits and pieces but not really the whole picture (or even close)

[@63302426]

Most of the concepts were present in Modern period of philosophy (Descartes, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Leibniz, Spinoza). His axioms are just a refined form of transcendental deduction (reason from the fact of consciousness and its features, and deduce from it the conditions of possibility). The fact of consciousness can give rise to the axioms (which is subject to arguments), and the translation of the axioms into postulates is the deduction process (which is subject to even more arguments). IIT is probably the scientific beginning of the study of consciousness (bridging the 1st person pov to the 3rd person pov).

[@vampireducks1622]

Why oh why do they do this? It's not complicated. When filming a slides-assisted presentation, make sure you also include the slides, not just the speaker. Why can't they get this?

[@oscarm.4078]

Because they need to figure out where consciousness comes from first, duh

[@dannyteebone9233]

Maybe you took the blue pill?

[@yifuxero5408]

Do we know what a cow is, "In-Itself". Aristotle explored questions like this. The only thing we can experience "In-Itself" is BEING-IN-Itself, the Tao, the Substance of Spinoza, the One of Plotinus, the Ein Sof of the Hebrew Scriptures, and Sat-Chit-Ananda of Advaaita Vedanta. No problem. Access "Mahamritunjaya manatra - Sacred Sounds Choir" , and listen to it for 5 min per day for at least two weeks. Eventually, by merging into Pure Consciousness, you will know what it's "like" to be a cow, a rabbit, a bat, the sky, dirt, people, .....; everything in the multiverse.

[@jonassteinberg3779]

He says that consciousness is subjective, but if that's true then why is the subjective experience dependent upon the object of consciousness? For example: I see the lamp. In Tononi's view that experience is removed from the lamp, i.e. consciousness is produced by my brain and the lamp is inconsequential. But without the lamp what sense does my subjective experience make? In that sense subjective experience depends on objective experience and because of this subject and object cannot actually be found and thus consciousness is not exactly produced.

[@thaumazein276]

I don't know what IIT would think but I think consciousness is always consciousness of something. The fact that you see the lamp is different from your inner experience of you seeing the lamp however. I don't understand how it contrasts with subjective experience

[@antimaterialworld2717]

@@thaumazein276 i think that question is , why is there necessity of some outside object if our brain produces experience? ...Many thinkers oscillate in this duality of subjective and objective altough in fact its both simultaneously . Question then remains what is initial cause since non of those two by itself seems to provide answer.

[@robertbeniston]

Consciousness is being aware that you are alive and exist whether you call it "experience" or not. As life and consciousness is separate from matter it is metaphysical in nature and independent of the physical matter our bodies are made of. Our ability to think and reason and make decisions (and our personality) is the function of the spirit in us although the brain has to have the ability to function in a complex way as well. The spirit needs the body to function just as a DVD disc needs a DVD player to play it's recording. To examine the brain to find consciousness is like examining the DVD player itself to find the film that the DVD disc supplies. .

[@kevinfairweather3661]

watched

[@paulkohl9267]

The set of five characteristics of consciousness per Tononi is the same as the required characteristics of a wave-function in Quantum Mechanics.

[@rysw19]

Whoa there. So far as I know Tunoni doesn’t even begin to make that claim. In IIT he uses the “axioms” to specifically develop an mathematical structure to yield a value for phi. It has nothing to do with the Schrodinger equation.

[@paulkohl9267]

@@rysw19 Even if Tunoni does not make the claim, that is fine -- I did. Phi is also often used as a symbol for wavefunctions; so, go figure. Frankly, the above is a boring criticism of my claims...

[@rysw19]

@@paulkohl9267 The symbol for the wave function is not Phi, it’s Psi. Different Greek letter. The point is you’re lumping two things together that have precise mathematical definitions and they aren’t remotely similar.

[@paulkohl9267]

@@rysw19 Boring. Next time someone points out something that looks at a topic in a new way, make sure and bore them with the exatitude of your mediocrity. Phi is the letter for the Higg's field. Look up the Wiki article on QM, it has a phi wavefunction in it. Need I go on??

[@rysw19]

@@paulkohl9267 I don’t need to. I’m no theoretical physicist, but I do know that when people represent wave functions, it’s typically done with Psi, not Phi. And I have a basic understanding of how it works. Essentially it has the same form as any general differential equation to represent a harmonic oscillator (think sine function, spring motion, etc) except that it’s multidimensional and has a complex value. Do you know why it has a complex value?

[@dougerhard2128]

So, theoretically speaking, if someone has no senses, they can have no consciousness?

[@HermanWillems]

Yes, because our consciousness is build up on our sensing the world. So what you can say is: All you ever experienced by your senses from birth untill now has created your neural pattern. So you are created by your environment. :) Anyway im not extremely right.. i take it as too easy. Because the brain has several layers. Our neural biological pattern is just one. But it's not our Consciousness i think. Sorry im a bit wrong... I think it has more to do with that our brain cannot change it's neural network when it has no senses. And cannot have consciousness too. It's useless without senses.

[@sjohn4134]

Yes because consciousness is an abstraction. Now the void in which these experiences flood into is an entirely different matter.

[@sjohn4134]

Herman Willems it's important to realize that the brain computes information which manifests our conscious experience. The very interesting thing is, is that the brain is equally apart of that information. Imagine looking into a mirror with your brain exposed for example. Therefore there has to be an underlying non material reality. Similar to the coding from which a video game manifests it's virtual environment. This is where simulation theory and the matrix theory come in.

[@empyrionin]

No, ignore all the answers you have read, humans and animals are not born a clean slate - we are born according to a "recipe" - the DNA - and there are pre-programmed regions of the brain otherwise known as "instincts". Other regions of the brain such as the amygdala are also pretty hardcoded. Basic feelings, needs and wants exists since day one we are born, even if there is no sensory input - see blind-deaf children.

[@lettersquash]

@@empyrionin That may be so (we're not born a clean slate), but I don't think it follows that we'd have consciousness even without any senses. Someone born blind and deaf still has three other senses, and it would need to be established that with none at all the brain would still have conscious experience. What would it have experience of, with no input ever? We might conjecture that the DNA will give it some kind of species memory or "instincts", as you call them, but we have no idea whether they are actual things, or if they operate consciously or not. Would this dislocated brain have nightmares about snakes when it's neither seen, heard, touched or smelled one? The DNA doesn't keep that kind of information, nor code for proteins that keep it.

[@Wismerhil]

Our consciousness is built upon our sensing the world. All you ever experienced by your senses from birth until now has shaped your neural patterns. You are created by randomness applied to your genes and shaped by the environment. The brain has several layers, our neural biological pattern is just one. Consciousness is a feedback loop. Our brain can not change it's neural network when it has no senses and in that case, it can not have consciousness. Also, brain degenerative illness (e.g. Alzheimer) or accidents (e.g. Phineas Gage) can alter your consciousness. Meaning, you are less what you think you are and more what "stuff" makes you. Basically, we are much more a finite-state machine than a "son of god" sort of speak. "Believe" is just a functional mechanism of the "human machine".

[@antoniofdez]

I think he basically circumvents the question of explaining the origin of consciousness like in cosmology about the order of the universe. His solution is nothing else than a version of the "anthropic principle", but applied to neuroscience instead of cosmology: given that we exist, how should the environmental conditions look like? Exactly the same, but nevertheless, at least cosmology has come with the many-world hypothesis to explain the order of the universe, but here I don't see nothing to explain the hard-problem, just it is taking for granted (like taking for granted that life and galaxies should exist). No wonder the predictions are correct, he's just following the same road as cosmologists, but in his field, and we know from cosmology the anthropic principle works very well. However, I'm not satisfied that what he takes as axioms (like Euclid in geometry, but neuroscience is not geometry) are, precisely that, axioms, so the search for their causes (surely, the why question always exists, and axioms can be always changed, so why did the brain came with these axioms?; furthermore, psychodelic drugs could alter these axioms) are totally left.

[@gerardjones7881]

Antonio Fernández Guerrero Most physicists reject the anthropic idea.

[@kyjo72682]

+Antonio Fernández Guerrero IMO the anthropic reasoning is the only approach that ultimately works. Especially with questions like these which are actually very related to cosmology. I don't see anything wrong with taking the subjective anthropic route and starting with most certain assumptions like cogito ergo sum, and basic observations about features of our consciousness. I think it's actually absolutely necessary to exactly define what it is that we are trying to explain...

[@kyjo72682]

The axioms might not be precise for some corner cases.. but at least it's something to start with. If the theory has useful practical applications I think might be on the right track.

[@JDMitch014]

Agreed, this only works for non conscious processes, it doesnt make you" feel"

[@junevandermark952]

I suggest it’s as possible that humans will be aware after death, as it will be possible that alligators, or bears, or snakes, or mosquitoes will be aware after death, and that if as a species, we had evolved with paws or hooves, neither science nor religion would exist. Much ado about nothing … William Shakespeare.

[@dannyteebone9233]

Med Beds?

[@DaroG35]

Nonsense!

[@Danzelblock]

Glaring that he's indulging in the delusion that emotions are separate from consciousness.

[@michelechaussabel732]

Yes, emotions are at the root of many/most conscious connections.

[@danb7601]

Consciousness is non-local and can exist independently of the brain which is merely a receiver. Ok I'm ready, FLAME ME!!!

[@danielbigham]

When I was in university I considered the opposite: That consciousness is the receiver -- imagine consciousness as if it were the screen in the front of the movie theatre -- you can project information onto the screen. Whatever you project onto it is experienced. And so it is like a "receiver". As I thought about consciousness this way, I imagined the brain as being the "functional" / "computable" thing. It's what you'd use to perceive the world, to consider possibilities, to make decisions, etc. But the "screen" that was projected onto by the brain was what allowed you to experience what your brain was perceiving and choosing, etc. This made consciousness seem "inert" in the decision making process -- something for experiencing, but not for deciding, etc. However, I eventually realized that my intense fascination with conciousness, which had led me to write an essay on it, was actually a simple and elegant proof that consciousness is not a mere "receiver", because my experience of it had caused me to write an essay. Therefore, the experiential aspect of the mind can both be affected by the computation/functional aspects of the brain, and affect the computationa/functional aspects of the brain. There is causal power that flows in both directions. I find this very mysterious...

[@noneofourfinbusiness]

Evidence or there is nothing worthy of flaming.

[@danb7601]

@@noneofourfinbusiness Read osis and harraldsons "at the hour of death" and "the self does not die" from Titus rivas etc al, that should be a good primer, I could summarize but ti's pointless, you need the entirety of the detail

[@noneofourfinbusiness]

@@danb7601 Delusions of all kinds are common in terminally ill patients, especially as death draws near. Mostly due to different disease process (eg rising amonia levels due to liver failure). But also sometimes due to the raw mental duress of dying. A book that reports on a sub-set of people describing a common hallucination is not any kind of evidence imho.

[@danb7601]

@@noneofourfinbusiness Well you've made your mind up before apprehending the evidence, the opposite of science, have fun with that. I could go into all the specific ways in which you wrong with citations, but ye, your not receptive.