No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

http://duncancarroll.tumblr.com/post/57994245946/no-really-consciousness-is-worth-thinking-about

by duncancarroll • 13 years ago

155 151 13 years ago

duncancarroll.tumblr.com

EGreg4• 13 years ago

I think David Chalmers would agree with you wholeheartedly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

Even Patricia Churchland thinks there is a lot here. Philosophers of the mind have dedicated their whole professional careers and lives to thinking about this.

mistercow3• 13 years ago

I think David Chalmers might also notice that this poster is tearing apart a straw man. The "Sophomoric philosophy" quote, for example, was not someone saying "it's sophomoric to think that consciousness is worth thinking about". S/he was saying that the arguments given by the OP were sophomoric.

In fact, a tiny minority of the comments in that thread were dismissive of consciousness as an interesting topic of thought. Only one of the comments quoted in this post could reasonably be interpreted as dismissive, but even that one had interesting points to make.

Xcelerate3• 13 years ago

I upvoted the original article not necessarily because I thought it was particularly well-written, but because I looked forward to seeing what the HN comments about the article would say. Nevertheless, I left to go somewhere before I had a chance to peruse them.

I think in a conversation about consciousness, it's very important to define exactly what it is you're talking about. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I get the impression that within the field, "consciousness" refers to specific patterns of brain activity. (Some neuroscientist on here can correct me if I'm wrong.) These patterns can be be studied experimentally, simulated computationally, or theorized about mathematically. All fall well into the modern definition of what science encompasses. Testable predictions about reality can be made and understood.

Then the author of the first piece uses a different word a little later in the article:

Experience - "why does the feeling which accompanies awareness of sensory information exist at all?"

This, in my opinion, is a whole different idea. As a scientist myself (my research is in molecular-dynamics and quantum monte carlo), "experience" is not something that can be assessed at all by the scientific method. Many people argue that "experience" doesn't even exist (see the concept of p-zombies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie). As for me personally, I'm certain that it does, for if you removed all of my faculties and senses with the exception of leaving my mind intact, I would still experience existence. The curious thing about this is that there's no way for me to tell whether other people (you all) exist in the same way that I do, not even in theory. How do I know if you actually experience existence or are simply a collection of particles following the same rules of physics that everything else does? For then if I was you, I wouldn't be me anymore. One prerequisite for something being scientific is that it must be testable, and this sort of thing is not. So it's not science and I don't waste time conflating it with what actually is science. It's an interesting philosophical question. It's been debated for centuries, and it will continue to be debated for centuries (along the same lines as qualia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia) but there will never be any kind of resolution to the issue.

TelmoMenezes6• 13 years ago

Neuroscience hasn't been able to produce a single theory on the origin of consciousness, unless one accepts "it emerges from neural activity" as an explanation.

Consciousness appears to be the ultimate mystery. There is something very fundamental about it that we don't understand at all. This makes a lot of people uncomfortable, especially the type of people that would like to turn Science into a religion. We just don't know, and it's intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise.

blueprint3• 13 years ago

Consciousness is a mystery only to those that cannot define what it is.

What is the origin of awareness itself? It is the very activities one is aware of. The activities produce energy which we call consciousness. The dimension that the consciousness can see is determined by the quality of the very activities.

Consciousness is thus not solely generated by neurological activities.

Before denying this because of your first impression, please confirm if what I'm saying is true or not, and whether it is confirmed by all evidence or if there is in fact any evidence which contradicts it. What I've said here doesn't come from my thoughts or ideas.

tokipin• 13 years ago

on the other end, i think it's also weird to say that we will never understand consciousness.

frankly i think our science just isn't very advanced at the moment. particularly lacking is our understanding of anything that isn't linear

dvanduzer• 13 years ago

It's perfectly reasonable to define consciousness as "that which emerges from neural activity" if your model is able to describe that emergent behavior.[0]

This is not the same as describing what it "feels like" from the inside. From your comment, I infer that you are rejecting the explanatory powers of neuroscience because you are expecting it to speak to the "feels like" question.

[0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/

simonster2• 13 years ago

Well, there is Gulio Tononi's Information Integration Theory (http://www.biolbull.org/content/215/3/216.long, see also Christof Koch's summary in SciAm at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-theory-of...). Personally, I don't find it particularly compelling at present, since the claims made are much stronger than the evidence to support them and I'm not entirely sure I believe the assumptions necessary to test the theory empirically. But it's out there.

robbiep2• 13 years ago

And what is wrong with 'it emerges from neural activity'?

really, it is quite an adequate solution for a species with our current level of philosophical and scientific understanding.

That doesn't mean it is right, and doesn't discount potentially other options such as something that, despite my own strong scientific background, I have a fondness for through buddhism and meditation - and which is mentioned in the original article - that there is just one consciousness we all share in.

despite my fondness for this, the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of a complex neural network is supported by the evidence that shows that damage to the brain will impair an entity's level of consciousness.

Therefore, the idea that consciousness in LIFE doesn't require the brain, or vice versa, is simply mysticism and denying the truth that we all experience

I agree with you that consciousness is quite a mystery, but in terms of the ultimate mystery I feel very strongly that the question of life, consciousness and why there is something instead of nothing is a question that goes together and that they are all intricately linked

paganel• 13 years ago

There is something very fundamental about it that we don't understand at all. This makes a lot of people uncomfortable, especially the type of people that would like to turn Science into a religion.

I could be wrong, but as an European my understanding is that there are people in the States who actually believe in non-science things like Adam and Eve and all that, so that when you begin to say that maybe Science doesn't or can't have all the answers (for example just the other day I was thinking "hey, has anyone proved that mathematical induction is really intellectually honest? or was Hume actually right and it's all make-believe?") you're immediately tagged as "a lunatic guy who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old" by Science-loving American redditors (HN is a little bit more forgiving), doesn't matter that I may be an agnostic and that I'm amazed that things like "God" are brought into a discussion which tries to make sense of the things around us.

It would also help if people would have a little more knowledge of the history of Science itself, this way they'd know about guys like La Mettrie or the French positivists who lived in the 19th century, meaning this discussion has happened many times before.

aquaroris• 13 years ago

I'm thinking that consciousness, as it stands right now, is associated with a lot of things that should and ought to be reduced to mere sensation.

Consciousness is associated with thought, emotion, and sensation. Yet as neuroscience progresses, I think we will eventually functionalize thought, emotion, and sensation as biological processes.

Some may argue that our mental processes are fundamentally differently perceived from our external senses. But as a human being, we have internal sensations as well. We can feel internal pain and stomachaches. These have a fundamentally different sensation from the sensations that can be externally induced in us. Extrapolating further, we can say that thinking and feeling and other mental activity are mere sensations of the consciousness induced by the brain.

Before physics, there was a large role for divinities in the world. Gods and the Abrahamic God ruled Nature and Fortune, the parts of the world that we do not understand. But as human beings gained mastery and confidence over the external world, the domain of divinities shrank and shrank. We now attribute causes of phenomena to the natural world, rather than divinities; divinities used to be the natural law of the universe, today they have to be content with the supernatural.

Regardless of the philosophical justifications of consciousness, I see it going the way of divinities. The popularity of consciousness will wane as mental functions and mental states and cognition are understood. Societies will begin to use neuroscientific explanations to justify perception and behavior that provide actionable innovation and correction instead of attributing them to black-box consciousness.

When that happens, the idea of consciousness will, I think, seem as absurd as divinities.

rickhanlonii3• 13 years ago

I don't see anyone pretending that we know consciousness.

However, we are in the process of understanding, and there has yet to be any proof or indication that that process will end before we conquer that knowledge. Given what we already know, and that we're in the infancy of real research in this area, there's every reason to believe that we're going to solve this mystery in the near future.

And it's intellectually cowardice to pretend otherwise.

sveme2• 13 years ago

There are actually highly interesting developments at the intersection of philosophy and neuroscience, one of them being the works of Thomas Metzinger (see, e.g., http://www.amazon.com/Being-No-One-Self-Model-Subjectivity/d...).

It's simply wrong to state that research into consciousness is at the state of "it emerges from neural activity".

sjs1234• 13 years ago

Antonio Damasio is a neuroscientist. He has a theory of consciousness explained in a book called the feeling of what happens. The somatic marker hypothesis is a bit more than 'it emerges from neural activity' At the very minimum the book debunks a good number of otherwise plausible sounding theories. Damasio in that book also does a fantastic job of removing any mysticism from the exercise ... He's trying to explain what each of us recognize as conciousness in other animals. E.g. Many people think their dogs are concious without also holding mystical beliefs.

foobarbazqux3• 13 years ago

The interesting thing is that the scientific method is fundamentally based on humans agreeing about their experiences, usually ones involving their sense of sight.

test-it2• 13 years ago

No, it's not. It can be used by a single, blind person, be it a human or not.

orblivion2• 13 years ago

It occurred to me at one point - the fact that you and I even try to argue the point that consciousness exists, is evidence to outside observers that we are not philosophical zombies. (Which leads to an amusing, or perhaps disturbing, question about the people who scoff at the concept)

Also, it may not be science but it is still philosophy and extremely important. Science is based on philosophy too.

simonster2• 13 years ago

It sounds like you're misunderstanding the concept of a zombie. Zombie simonster is physically identical to simonster. On Twin Earth he is also sitting in front of his computer talking about consciousness, and he also emphatically believes that he is conscious. The only difference between zombie simonster and me is that, when zombie simonster says he is conscious, he is wrong.

David Chalmers discusses this possibility in his book, and doesn't believe that it invalidates the zombie argument, but personally, I would prefer to think that the fact that I am sitting here writing about consciousness is somehow related to the fact that I am conscious. I'm still thinking this through, and have been for some time, but I think this requires that consciousness be physical in nature.

yohui2• 13 years ago

Actually, from the outside, a philosophical zombie would be indistinguishable from a non-zombie. Zombie Chalmers would write books, papers, and opine on the nature of consciousness and his subjective experience exactly as the real Chalmers would.

For a most amusing take on the p-zombie idea, see:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/pn/zombies_the_movie/

(Though humorous, it's the capstone to a series of articles on p-zombies: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Zombies_(sequence) )

LeafStorm• 13 years ago

One prerequisite for something being scientific is that it must be testable, and this sort of thing is not. So it's not science and I don't waste time conflating it with what actually is science. It's an interesting philosophical question.

As a dualist, I agree that the question of whether experience exists (and whether there is a soul of some type powering it) is not answerable by science. But many of the people I discuss this with take the attitude that because it can't be answered by science, it's not even worth discussing as a possibility. It feels like a physicist approaching a mathematician with a theory based on experimental results, and being rebuffed for not having a proof.

I haven't even read the original article, much less the HN comments, but based on what I've read here (and on my past experience discussing similar subjects on HN), a similar attitude is likely to be at play.

eloff3• 13 years ago

The odds argument for example is easy explained with the anthropic principle - namely we wouldn't be thinking about the odds of being conscious unless we were conscious.

The article mostly takes three mysterious things: time, quantum mechanics, and consciousness and gives them one hand-waving "consciousness was always there and will always be there" answer. It's tidy in a way, but that's not science and it's completely opposed to the spirit of science.

Not to mention a non-physicist drawing conclusions about unrelated fields using difficult to understand theories is new-age mysticism. It's the same pseudoscience people like Deepak Chopra have been spouting for years. A physicist would be quick to point out that observation affects the quantum realm regardless of whether there is a human being checking the output of his instruments or not (although as I'm not a physicist, I may be too rash in drawing even that conclusion.) Or in Harris's words, the moon doesn't go away when nobody's looking at it.

Consciousness is indeed a mystery, but the article adds little of substance to the discussion.

neltnerb• 13 years ago

The only sensible experiential definition I've heard for consciousness is the word "cognizance". Meaning, consciousness is the ability to be aware. This is the term many Buddhists use in translation, and it's by far the best fitting for me.

It fundamentally comes from asking the question, "What am I if you strip away everything that is impermanent?" Emotions are impermanent, thoughts are impermanent, sensations are impermanent... but cognizance -- if you take that away, there is no longer anything. It is the most fundamental.

I didn't notice the earlier post on this, but I think all people should think deeply on this. It is not just sophomoric philosophy, it's deeply practical, and few people bashing it understand it. That lack of understanding leads incredibly often to, well, suffering.

Acknowledging the nature of existence intellectually isn't enough, you need to experience it. I see this very often in people of any age. Fear of death, fear of loss, fear of love, fear of change. But at the root, no matter what happens if you are comfortable with the nature of your own existence, you know that no one can take that cognizance away. Buddhists monks manage to light themselves calmly on fire in the interest of helping others.

Anyway. I obviously have many thoughts on this. It's something I've been thinking about and meditating on a great deal for over a decade. I will just end with a famous quote by Pascal.

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

EDIT: I also hate it when philosophers abuse physics. I'm a physicist, so every time I hear "quantum mechanics" in a philosophical context I put down the book to avoid throwing it. As a friend put it, as soon as Buddhist monks can derive the ground state of the hydrogen atom, I'll give them credit for understanding quantum mechanics. I think that people who suggest that Buddhism is related to these sorts of things know neither physics nor Buddhism.

hjw• 13 years ago

I personally don't spend a large amount of time thinking about consciousness because I question the practicality. The subject matter is so dense, and like other(s) have stated, philosophers have dedicated their entire lives to pondering the issue.

Frankly it sometimes upsets me when I do put an extensive amount of time into it and don't end up coming up with anything conclusive; it is depressing. There is (obviously) a incredible amount of ambiguity surrounding the subject, and there is something about this particular issue that is unnerving.

On the other hand if you can stomach the subject matter it is very stimulating, unfortunately it does not lead to concrete conclusions.

kepano• 13 years ago

"What discourages me here is that the overall tone of the HN commenters is: Get with the program. Instead of acknowledging that it is an open question and saying something like, “Interesting hypothesis, my own thoughts are that X, Y, Z, but have you read A, B, or C, which indicate Q…”, the response is: (chuckle) Consciousness? We solved that, didn’t you get the memo?"

Amen. We need to stop letting the comments devolve into such a miasma and use each story as a jumping off point for intelligent conversation -- why can't we be friends?

Continuing on the meta-topic at hand... A flaw that seems to occur in many intelligent people's minds is that as soon as we're able to form an opinion on a particular subject, we assume everyone else has too. Let's take a moment to appreciate that we don't all have state-of-the-art knowledge on every single topic. Our aim should be to help each other move further along, not shoot down attempts to learn.

oblique634• 13 years ago

why can't we be friends?

Indeed. Here, have an upvote to counteract the downvotes. It looks like this thread is heading to be derailed just as much as the last one unfortunately. HN is cool when it's about concrete subjects like tech/programming/business, but anything more abstract than that is really unnerving to watch unfold around here, and I'm sure we both wish it wasn't so. Honestly, the only reason I even comment on HN is to try and invoke these sorts of underrepresented viewpoints into conversation, but it's quite overwhelming to even try sometimes.

Gravityloss3• 13 years ago

Everybody keeps getting the Schrödinger's cat experiment 100% backwards. It was created by Schrödinger to highlight how absurd the interpretation of quantum mechanics was at that time.

Since then, even the Copenhagen interpretation basically says that the "observation" happens already at the Geiger counter: "Analysis of an actual experiment found that measurement alone (for example by a Geiger counter) is sufficient to collapse a quantum wave function before there is any conscious observation of the measurement" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat#Copenh...

Consciousness might be worth thinking about. If it exists independently of the brain, it still must have effects on the brain, to have effects on human actions. These effects on the brain could be measurable. "This voltage here went up for an unknown reason".

Further, it pushes the question to another unobservable "magical" world. So, the consciousness exists in another world which is not directly measurable. Can we measure it indirectly? What is the structure of consciousness in the astral plane or however you are going to call it? If the whole goal of arguing that the consciousness exists in the astral plane is that "we can't study it", then that sounds a bit non-serious.

mcguire3• 13 years ago

I once had a friend who described a RPG scenario in a world in which "science doesn't work". My response was, "Wait, science is, by definition, figuring out, by whatever means, what works and what does not, whatever that means." Postulating that science doesn't work, or that "we can't study it", is going to result in a radically odd universe.

Dylan168072• 13 years ago

The cat experiment is a simplification. It doesn't matter that it was created to show the absurdity. People are not getting it wrong.

All you need to know at the end is that the bigger / more energy a system has, the less time it can stay superimposed before collapsing by itself into one state. For anything macro-scale this timeline is basically zero.

Gravityloss3• 13 years ago

"For anything macro-scale this timeline is basically zero." People don't get this.

mistercow3• 13 years ago

So my comment got quoted. Neat. I'd like to respond to:

My response: who said anything about metaphysical?

Well, the original author did. The entire article is, at its core, an argument for dualism. Dualism is a metaphysical theory.

As for the accusation that I intended to imply that consciousness was a solved problem, all I can say is "What?" Seriously, how did you get that from what I said?

The problem with the article, and the reason that people responded negatively (although, I think, for the most part thoughtfully), is not that everybody thinks the problem of consciousness is easy, or that it has been solved. It's that the arguments presented were weak and not particularly interesting or novel.

I agree that discussion on HN should be thoughtful and polite. But I don't think that means we should be constantly patting each other on the back and blowing up each other's egos.

I also don't really think the quote mining here was helpful. Here's the comment that was quoted simply as "Not a useful concept": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6195854

Huh, it actually looks like that comment went on to bring up the concept of zombies, and linked to further reading. I guess quoting that part of the comment wouldn't have supported your indignant outrage though.

Finally, the position that consciousness is not a useful concept is an important part of this discussion. How can we even have a meaningful conversation about consciousness without first addressing whether what we're talking about is real?

oblique634• 13 years ago

I respectfully submit that this attitude should be considered harmful, for several reasons, not the least of which is that it stifles intellectual curiosity into a subject that is still an open book

Indeed. It is quite discerning to see smart people fighting against what they believe to be anti-intellectualism with a fair share of anti-intellectualism of their own. I believe it might have more to do with a lack of exposure to varied subjects rather than a definite lack of intellectual curiosity in general however. Because many hackers are quite intellectually curious in their own domain, yet can still be susceptible to being as cynical and myopic as religious fundamentalists in other areas for some reason. The quality of thinking critically doesn't always seem to transcend domains, so I'm guessing it's a side-effect of living in a filtered environment beyond some developmental milestone of a person's curiosity. The string of comments in this other recent thread showcases this type of odd adherence to lack of understanding quite nicely: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6194276

It really is odd how when philosophy is explicitly brought up, it is generally labeled as a useless endeavor, yet in most other discussions you see philosophical questions being raised all the time with the intention of using them as 'appeals to ambiguousness', when (as you mentioned) most of these questions have already been asked and thoroughly answered by philosophers ages ago. Not that there's anything wrong in not knowing about this, but clearly there's an interest to know these types of answers that arises organically, which makes the dismissal of philosophy an ultimately misguided exercise in cognitive dissonance. Throw in all the (literally ancient) logical fallacies you see being thrown around amongst smart, well-educated people, and it just makes the whole situation even more confusing.

While I admittedly haven't read deeply enough into the psychology behind the Meyer-Briggs personality types, they do define and elaborate on types of people that could logically lead to these kinds of odd views. The easiest example is of the classic INTP vs INTJ types, both of which are strikingly similar, yet supposedly differ in one general crucial area. INTP's take all the input they can about the world and evolve their framework of understanding around it, while INTJ's supposedly form their elaborate framework of understanding first, then explore their inputs that correspond to it. I'm only somewhat partial to this explanation because I line up as a perfect INTP on all counts, but it honestly might as well be astrology at this point for all I know. Still a fun thought experiment though.

EDIT: I realize that most on HN like speaking in more concrete terms, such as about the neurological basis for the notions of 'consciousness' and all that, however abstract argumentation and analysis does have use when talking about the act of argumentation itself. So I hope those who downvoted me at least provide an explanation within that context, because I am admittedly curious about what other perspectives there are on this matter.

mistercow3• 13 years ago

I really don't think this is about anti-intellectualism at all. It's about the arguments in the article being poor ones, and in many cases ones that we've seen before. Saying that an argument is sophomoric does not imply that you think the subject isn't worth thinking about.

The top comment that was disingenuously quoted as only as "Sophomoric philosophy", was actually a well thought out dissection of several of the arguments presented. The poster of this rant has been shamefully dishonest in misrepresenting the comments he quoted, cherry picking phrases from them to put them in the worst possible light.

As a side note, you might want to know that Myers-Briggs is pretty much pseudoscience. It has low retest reliability, meaning that people who take are tested more than once often show different results. In addition, the Myers-Briggs profiles are similar to astrological readings in that each of them could apply to almost anybody.

oblique634• 13 years ago

It has low retest reliability, meaning that people who take are tested more than once often show different results.

That's good to know. I still think the term 'pseudoscience' is thrown around a bit too loosely though. There's falsifiability as a criterion for scientific theories sure, but building to a full out 'theory' requires quite a bit of maturity on the part of the 'science'. Some ideas fail at the onset like homeopathy, but others might have to be investigated more thoroughly before knowing for sure. The only thing I generally have against the 'pseudoscience' label is the effect it has on people that dissuade them from following anything approaching a certain line of reasoning sometimes. As with personality types, the Myers-Briggs framework might be bunk, but the underlying idea could be feasible, thinking of it as the emergence of certain patterns and algorithms from genetics and neurological connections; after all, we are seeing something that might end up being quite like this in the realm of IQ. But I digress.

The point is that we are approaching a future that is going to need more and more cross-disciplinary knowledge and approaches to really figure things out, and the loud belittlement and stigmatization of general approaches is a bit discerning to see around circles of intellectual people.

lmm4• 13 years ago

It really is odd how when philosophy is explicitly brought up, it is generally labeled as a useless endeavor, yet in most other discussions you see philosophical questions being raised all the time with the intention of using them as 'appeals to ambiguousness', when (as you mentioned) most of these questions have already been asked and thoroughly answered by philosophers ages ago. Not that there's anything wrong in not knowing about this, but clearly there's an interest to know these types of answers that arises organically, which makes the dismissal of philosophy an ultimately misguided exercise in cognitive dissonance.

Do you have examples? As a scientist I'm inclined to see science as the true heir to ancient philosophy, and the part that still calls itself "philosophy" as, well, an inferior branch. When I spoke to philosophy students at university they seemed to study a really weird mix of things - about 1/3 history, 1/3 mathematical logic but covered less formally (which was intensely irritating when we shared lecturers because if there's one field where you really need to be formal it's mathematical logic), and 1/3 these very... abstract arguments that felt like they might say something interesting if any of the terms they used were defined rigorously and the arguments were written out symbolically, with small pieces of what should be science thrown in almost at random, but it was missing the desire to connect all this up and actually perform experiments to see what was right.

oblique634• 13 years ago

I actually generally agree with your assessment here. Modern things that are generally labeled as 'philosophy' and only 'philosophy' are rather abstract and with very little clarity as to their usefulness. Most of the useful philosophical ideas were indeed established back before science was fully autonomous, but even as recently as the works of sir Karl Popper (1902-1994; the father of the idea that scientific theories must be 'falsifiable') have had a very noticeable influence in the sciences. What's important to note however, is that Popper's writings were much more practical and grounded down to the act and methods of science, than any of the writings of Plato ever were for example. And that's really the point I'm getting at; philosophy has shifted more from being a useful 'subject', to being a useful approach. The art of philosophical argumentation and elaboration of ideas is still very much relevant and useful as it ever was, it's just going to be finding it's niches in more and more applied areas, to the point where people will forget they're even discussing philosophy.

Any major breakthroughs in philosophy are almost certainly going to come from philosophically-minded specialists (e.g. scientists/engineers/politicians/linguists/mathematicians/etc) in the future. But just because it doesn't carry the big overarching label of "philosophy" doesn't mean that it is not. I mean, the definition of philosophy itself is so vague, that you could say that it is simply the byproduct of any exploration that uses philosophical tools (e.g. formal logic/logical fallacies), so it really doesn't go against what you're saying at all.

I agree that if all one's doing now is studying philosophy, and philosophy only, it's gonna be hard to contribute anything terribly useful to society (unless you can get a job as a historian). But the tools that philosophy gives us should never be discarded because they are ultimately the atomic building blocks that let us know whether we're on the right track or not, and thus, thinking philosophically is of critical importance. And that is where philosophy is now. It is not a field of it's own, it is scattered throughout several other fields, but the art is still very much in tact. It this bad misconception that gives philosophy these lazy/useless/idealist connotations. And that is unfortunate, because there is much people can learn from thinking philosophically, that they do not (unfortunately) seem to gain just from thinking 'scientifically'. I'm going to blame this on training/education rather than the designation of the field itself, since science should teach how to think critically, but the practice of this does not seem to extend beyond the student's specific/applied area from my experience. Philosophy helps here because the whole point of it is to train a person's entire outlook to process information critically, rather than only apply that approach to certain specific/narrow areas.

tl;dr: Philosophy is the mathematical language of reason, and good reasoning skills should be important for everybody. However, applied philosophy within specific domains (e.g. ethics/math/politics/etc) is likely to be the only way we will continue to make more philosophical advancements in the future. Arguing that we don't need philosophy anymore because now we have science, is like arguing that we don't need math anymore because now we have programming; both are important in their own specialized ways because of the approaches they allow.

dglittle• 13 years ago

it's so exciting to me that this community has some interest in consciousness. my background is 'hacker', but looking forward, I think consciousness is highly relevant (soon, we really will be able to hack our own brains, and when that happens, I think we'll care a lot about consciousness theory).

anyway, I've written some blog posts with some thoughts on this topic that I'll throw into the mix:

http://realgl.blogspot.com/2012/12/consciousness.html

http://realgl.blogspot.com/2012/06/dimension-of-interpretati...

(note that these posts were written maybe six months ago)

tocomment• 13 years ago

Interesting reading. I like your writing style it's very clear and easy to understand even though these are complex concepts.

gems3• 13 years ago

I tend to be dismissive of the philosophical conversation. I think what will resolve the question is scientific (biological) study. Maybe math/cs theorists (AI) will get there first. But I am almost certain that no philosophical conversation we can have will give me an insight about our cognition.

vonsydov2• 13 years ago

What's most interesting to me is how every few years (and every few decades sometime back) we're able to rationalize away certain kinds of subjective phenomena.

Will we eventually reach a point where we completely STOP considering pure awareness as a problem...don't know...I guess nobody knows. But this kind of thing happens every so often where a large amount of people stop taking something seriously. At this point e.g. existence of an anthropomorphic god.

test-it2• 13 years ago

OK, what's your definition of consciousness?

Most animals, even single celled, need to have some way to handle the separation between "me" and "the rest of the world". I look at say my cat - it definitely has this concept somewhere in its brain circuitry. What human has is just more neurons.

tatumizer4• 13 years ago

If single-cell organism is conscious, and each cell of our body is a "single cell", it immediately follows from here that "our" consciousness is in fact consciousness of a certain, very specialized, cell which resides somewhere in our body. Maybe it lives in the brain, maybe elsewhere, but it's a single cell nonetheless.

jongraehl2• 13 years ago

It doesn't follow - the type of consciousness we experience could be different. Though if you were saying that it's absurd to call single cell 'conscious' in the sense that human brains are, then I agree.

negamax• 13 years ago

I think it's worth adding to this thread that Buddha in his teachings said, eye has eye consiousness, ear, tongue, mind.. has their consiousness. He described consiousness as one of the five aggregates of human state. I never could wrap my head around the concept that awakening means also to see consciousness as empty.

Attilaa2• 13 years ago

Beautiful. Thanks for linking in Buddha's teachings.

pknight• 13 years ago

I don't know why people don't think about this topic more, especially if you are curious person. A very interesting line of research that could have profound implications on science and our understanding of consciousness is being done by Radin et al. Specifically he's looking deeper at the possible role of consciousness and the collapsing of the wave in quantum theory with some really interesting repeatable experiments. He's taken the classic double slit experiment and has been testing to see whether conscious observers can affect the results merely by focusing their attention. So far the results are positive. Here's one paper: http://www.deanradin.com/papers/Physics%20Essays%20Radin%20f...

anigbrowl2• 13 years ago

Personally I lean towards the idea of consciousness as an emergent phenomenon, ie closer to Hofstadter than Searle (for anyone who has wondered exactly what Godel, Escher, Bach is about, it's essentially a long argument for strong AI). However, I'm not sure about this; the main reason I can't subscribe to Searle's point of view is that he's trying to prove a negative, and I'd rather not know the answer than handwave one. I thought Carson's article was a bit fluffy and lacking focus, but then it was meant to provoke discussion and debate rather than offer a final answer.

By far the most intriguing counter-proposal to the conventional wisdom is the late Julian Jaynes' The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind which is such a monumentally good book that it's worth reading even if it is entirely wrong.

dylangs1030• 13 years ago

I never came across The Origin of Consciousness - what makes it "monumentally good" in your opinion?

anigbrowl2• 13 years ago

Oh dear, I can't easily sum it up in a couple of sentences. It's just a completely different way of thinking about how the mind works, the construction of personal identity, and the interaction between the individual and the rest of the world as to induce an acute sense of vertigo if you've grown up taking the Cartesian model for granted.

There's a summary at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_... but relying on the summary is like me telling you that Beethoven's 5th symphony is in C minor, opens with a distinctive motif, and is generally quite dramatic sounding...all true, but absolutely nothing like the experience of actually listening to it.

The book provided me with a completely different model for examination of the world, which is pretty unusual. While I don't feel wholly committed to Jaynes' model, I've found it enormously useful, in the same way as Understanding Media.

rasengan0• 13 years ago

For argument's sake: http://youtu.be/JTN9Nx8VYtk take on multiple perspectives and we can enjoy some fruits of the discussion

bhitov2• 13 years ago

This article is attacking a strawman. The original article was dismissed not for merely discussing consciousness but for doing it nonsensically.

incompatible• 13 years ago

My opinion is that consciousness is an aspect of self-aware thought, and arises from the physical operation of the brain. There's no reason to think that a computer couldn't be conscious, given the right programming, and perhaps far more conscious than a human, since it could be aware of every aspect of its own operation.

Since consciousness is an aspect of thought, it ceases to exist when thought stops, such as when you go to sleep or when you die. A new consciousness will be created if you wake up.

A corollary is that I don't think science fiction ideas such as teleportation or mind transfer into a machine give any philosophical problems. A new consciousness is created when the newly created body/software starts to think, the same way that it's created when you wake up in the morning.

jdietrich• 13 years ago

If you believe in the existence of consciousness, what would prove to you that your qualitative experience is fundamentally no different to the state of a Turing machine? What would persuade you that what is called "consciousness" is of no special interest?

OP states that "[consciousness is] a situation where a root cause is murky and escapes testability", which is simply special pleading. If you cannot test your hypothesis, what is more likely - that you have discovered a completely unique and mysterious phenomenon, or that your hypothesis is inadequate?

It appears to me that the whole argument is predisposed upon that sort of special pleading. We have no clear evidence for the existence of consciousness, but it must exist because my subjective perception tells me it does. That perception different from the subjective perception of god or auras or the buddha-nature because... it just is.

Bluntly, go away and come back when you have a null hypothesis.

benched2• 13 years ago

Do you yourself experience subjective awareness? Why? And what does that subjective awareness have to do with a Turing machine?

Tloewald• 13 years ago

but it must exist because my subjective perception tells me it does.

What is there besides one's own subjective perception? Hello! This is a figment of your imagination calling.

RivieraKid5• 13 years ago

Some people get so used to the idea that science explains everything, that they became completely blind to opposing views. It's hardwired deeply into their brains. That's how I explain to myself this kind of blindness I witness in every discussion about consciousness.

Why do I feel pain when the atoms in my brain are in a specific configuration? Current state-of-the-art physical models can't possibly explain that. And it's even impossible to describe what feeling of pain is in physical terms. (No, I don't mean neural activity during pain, I mean the feeling of pain.)

Every physical theory is based solely on consciouss experience. Everything we know about the world is through consciousness.

csallen2• 13 years ago

Science is not an opinionated entity that "explains" things. Rather, it is a method for learning more about the world around us while attempting to minimize influence from bias and other sources of human error.

It's not that we can only discover things via science. It's just that we shouldn't trust discoveries made via flashes of insight, clairvoyance, intuition, guesswork, divine inspiration, etc.

bhitov2• 13 years ago

You are assuming that the "feeling" of pain is inherently different from neural activity during pain. He is saying that to do so without argument is special pleading.

haliax• 13 years ago

Why should it matter whether or not "qualitative experience is fundamentally no different to the state of a Turing machine"? I don't see a claim anywhere that a Turing machine can't be conscious.

"but it must exist because my subjective perception tells me it does." seems like a rhetorical trick, consciousness is the underlying mechanism of perception, so it's not my perception of it that tells me it exists, it's the fact that I have perception at all.

As for a null hypothesis, how about this: "If my qualitative experience is no different to the state of a Turing machine, it should be possible to temporarily modify my mental state to remove all qualia -- so that I perceive nothing, but am still able to process everything" (In short, if I'm running code like sensoryData.processWithFeedbackTo(consciousness.Perception), it should be possible to do sensoryData.processWithFeedbackTo(null) temporarily)

a3voices• 13 years ago

The effect of your actions on the physical world is no different than an advanced Turing machine.

But the internals of your mind might contain some sort of consciousness that isn't understood yet scientifically.

lnanek2• 13 years ago

Russians have kept dog heads alive and reacting with nothing attached by medical support machines. French have chopped off heads and had the person react to voice commands. Plenty of people have broken their neck and still been mentally there.

Claiming consciousness does not come from the brain is just silly nonsense from before we had modern biology. Early philosophers thought the brain was for cooling blood. Even if you want to make up quantum superposition nonsense or whatever other big words you can find the place it is occurring is still inarguably the brain.

It's OK to go talk about useless, meaningless, non-diagnostic bullshit after that. But you should realize you are just being religious and not talking about anything worthwhile that then has meaning toward physical structures. You should no longer talk about the brain after that because you are just throwing in physical terms to try to get people who would otherwise dismiss you to pay attention.

bglusman2• 13 years ago

On my mobile so haven't had time to read all the comments or finish original article, but I agree, consciousness is worth thinking about, and trying to understand scientifically/rigorously. Many people are doing so but in particular in my research this one known as Integrated Information Theory[1] is a strong candidate, or precursor to such a candidate, and I'd encourage anyone intereated in the question or in advancing discussion of this proposed language and theory to do so[2]. Maybe I'm using the citation brackets wrong there though, apologies, I'm on a bus and it's dark and I'm tired :-)

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6197184

benched2• 13 years ago

You cannot reduce or hand-wave consciousness away by calling it illusory, or by reducing it to neural activity. You can try, but you'll just be stringing words together to make nonsense.

Every one of us experiences consciousness - subjectivity, qualitative awareness, 'what it is like to be a me' - directly. We gain one type of knowledge about consciousness by studying and poking the brain, and by observing people with abnormal brains. But that can only take us part of the way.

We gain another kind of knowledge about consciousness by making subjectivity into an object. We can do that via means such as meditation, LSD, DMT, mushrooms, marijuana, some types of physical exertion, and perhaps more esoteric means like astral travel, or involuntarily by near-death experiences. These give insights by allowing us to become aware of awareness, to perturb, or to side-step normal consciousness.

runeks• 13 years ago

I suspect that we cannot define what consciousness is because we are consciousness. Only an observer outside a system can say what that system is. An entity cannot observe itself.

The expression "experiencing consciousness" makes as little sense as "seeing vision" or "tasting flavor". Experiencing is consciousness, seeing is vision and tasting is flavor.

Attilaa2• 13 years ago

Thank You. I'm glad someone said this.

Edit:

Alan Watts talks in depth about these matters. Although these explanations are not scientific or falsifiable -- it's an interesting attempt at understanding our own views of consciousness.

Just because the feelings of love are not falsifiable, does not mean that it does not weave a great story that one tells themselves to keep sane.

calhoun1372• 13 years ago

Since we are doing another meta-discussion on how supposedly nasty the comment section is sometimes, I'd like to say I don't have a problem with the tone of the comments at all, and I for one would be really sad if people started pulling their punches. The extremely high degree of criticism found in the comments is actually something I value very highly about this community.

One of the things I love about the comment section is that people treat each other like adults who are capable of handling criticism. This isn't the office, this is HN.

Not being able to handle criticism is a debilitating personality trait for someone who wants to achieve a high level of success in any sort of intellectual pursuit; and that is the reason why I strongly disagree with the desire on the part of some to change this aspect of the community.

wpietri• 13 years ago

Criticism and nastiness are orthogonal.

Indeed, I think effective criticism is bound up with kindness. I know the times I've been an ass while criticizing somebody aren't about fixing the problem; they're about me looking smart at somebody else's expense. At best, I'm making them work past my obnoxiousness to get to the hopefully valuable bits. At worst, they discard the criticism as pure meanness.

On the other hand, if I'm really delivering criticism because I'd like someone to get better, then it usually works best when I make it easy to see that I'm on their side.

RivieraKid5• 13 years ago

I think what you're saying is quite stupid.

I often find HN discussions... not sure how to describe it... I guess I just don't like many of the commenters for some unconscious reason. It could be: passive-agressiveness, people who are not emotionally mature (pg), overall negativity, stupid people who try to sound smart. Or something else.

The atmosphere on other online communities is more positive, which is a good thing. You can disagree without being negative.

I also noticed that for some strange unconsciouss reason, I really dislike people who use cliché phrases like: "Just to play devil's advocate." or "X and Y are orthogonal".

(This comment is intentionally quite negative because you sound like an adult capable of taking criticism.)

calhoun1372• 13 years ago

I think what you're saying is quite stupid.

I'm assuming this is meant to be ironic and to try and prove something. But I challenge you to find a serious comment on HN that is this over the top negative and backs it up with as little as you do. It really doesn't bother me to be told I'm wrong, if I'm saying something stupid I want to be told that in no uncertain terms so that I don't repeat the same mistake again. But most of all, I want to know why what I said was wrong.

The atmosphere on other online communities is more positive, which is a good thing. You can disagree without being negative.

I don't disagree that HN comments are different from places like reddit, but you haven't really explained why it's "a good thing". I personally don't find a lot of value in being praised, because I don't learn anything and the danger is I might get a big ego. However, I do find enormous value in constructive criticism. When I have a young student without a ton of self-confidence, then I am generous with giving praise; but when a colleague who I respect comes to me with a bad idea, I treat them with respect by telling them why I think they are wrong.

d23• 13 years ago

Not being able to handle criticism is a debilitating personality trait for someone who wants to achieve a high level of success in any sort of intellectual pursuit; and that is the reason why I strongly disagree with the desire on the part of some to change this aspect of the community.

There's a difference between intelligent criticism and nit-picking for nit-picking's sake. There's basically a guarantee that no matter how widely accepted a comment or post is, there will be a group of pedants ready to rip it apart in the comments section.

I'm not saying that changing the attitude of the community is necessary, or even possible, but it does get in the way of what otherwise might be stimulating discussion to have all the weeds of "oh you said Z comes after Y, but actually the alphabet has no concept of space, and you're a god damned idiot who should feel ashamed for even suggesting such a thing."

eksith• 13 years ago

"I strongly disagree with the desire on the part of some to change this aspect of the community."

The community wasn't the way it is right now even a year or two ago. Nothing wrong with trying to change it back to civilized discussion away from a malaise more fitting in /r/programming.

As you say, this is HN.

mcguire3• 13 years ago

For anyone interested in quantum mechanics and consciousness, I recommend Scott Aaronson's book Quantum Computing Since Democritus; the chapters on Penrose are worth the price of admission. His blog, Shtetl-Optimized[1], is also a good read (and I think the book appeared there first).

On a different subject, recently there were a spasm of interest in fMRI studies that showed that "free" choices could be predicted based on neural activity well before a "conscious choice" was made.[2][3][4]

The general consensus seemed to be "Hah! Take that, free will!"

My take on the results were that they were hardly a surprise, if consciousness is an activity of the brain. You should no more expect to make a conscious decision prior to displaying brain activity relating to the decision than you should expect to perceive a flash of light before the light bulb is lit. It would not necessarily have any negative implications for the existence of free will; those experiments are simply exploring the mechanism of free will.

On the other hand, I believe they do kind of imply that consciousness is a product of the jello in your noggin. Either that or there are some funky delays involved.

Now, as for the third buttock: if consciousness doesn’t come from the brain, how does it work, exactly? I'd like some mechanism with my philosophy, thanks. Presumably, if I'm waving my arms around, you can trace the motor neuron activity from my appendages, up my spinal cord, and into my brain. But "and then a miracle occurs" is a pretty uninteresting way to connect that with the universe deciding that jazz hands are necessary.

[1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/

[2] http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_d...

[3] http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110831/full/477023a.html

[4] http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/09/03/free-choic...

aufreak3• 13 years ago

I didn't come across the HN post when the original article was posted. I think the original article has many warning signs of "sophomoric" thinking to warrant rapid dismissal.

The first big bold warning sign is this -

    "After reading and listening to David Chalmers, I came 
    to realize that there is an intelligent argument that
    supports the idea that consciousness does not emerge 
    from the brain.
    
    <big-n-bold>Quantum Mechanics</big-n-bold>"

Invoking the "magic" and "mysterious" quantum mechanics to understand and explain something that isn't even defined in the article is, indeed, "sophomoric philosophy".

In the original article, you'll also find this regarding the Schrodinger's cat "paradox" -

    "Many physicists today think the many-worlds theory
    resolves this paradox by stating that there are actually 
    infinitely many universes, some in which you are dead and 
    some in which you are living, and that once the quantum 
    trigger is measured/observed, a specific universe is 
    followed."

Plain wrong. The "many worlds" is not a "theory", but an interpretation of quantum mechanics. It does not add any new physical mechanisms over and above what we already have in quantum mechanics - i.e. there is no "once a quantum trigger is measured/observed" in the many worlds interpretation. All these universes exist. Period.

The problem of "observation" in quantum mechanics is being discussed here without even a mention of "decoherence". AFAIK, the unexplained part of quantum mechanics to date is the Born probabilities - i.e. why does the likelihood of observing an event correspond to the magnitude square of the amplitude we calculate for it. There are some recent insights into this, but I believe this is still unexplained.

The original thing that the article sought to explore is whether it is possible that consciousness does not come from the brain. If that is indeed the primary point to be explored in this essay, the question to be asked is what does "come from the brain" mean? When a current passes through a memory circuit, it toggles from 0 to 1. What does it mean to say this "comes from the circuit"? Does is not also "come from the current"?

We thus reach a point where all we can say is "shut up and compute", for we've fallen into the trappings of everyday language.

edit: typos.

bittired4• 13 years ago

Great post.

I personally think that people that reply indicating that anyone who doesn't believe in the traditional sciences, not including Philosophy but rather using our "accepted body of Physiological and Psychiatric knowledge" as truth, are one step away from Asperger's. I do not mean that in a derogatory sense, since many with Asperger's are highly functioning, but their tendency to clinch onto mathematics and incomplete (but widely accepted) science and use it as the answer for everything is childish. I believe that our universe (the entirety, beyond what we experience) is not completely "rational", but some just cannot accept that. We would not be where we are today without Philosophers like Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. However, if a conservative talk show host came along saying the same thing as these philosophers, they would attempt to beat him/her down for being an idiot.

There is much to be learned by thinking outside of the box and trying to understand others' points of view. I'm a conservative-leaning moderate and independent (U.S.). I actually listen to both sides of the story (or more if possible), and then make up my mind which works with my existing belief system and where I can improve, knowing that both of them are biased and probably neither are completely right or wrong.

I'm not better than anyone else, but I get frustrated, as it is farcical how one-sided conversations here can be, and how little people give and come to terms with each other.

bittired4• 13 years ago

Not sure why I'm surprised I got -1'd, but I'm guessing it is because someone wanted to prove my point?

verbin2172• 13 years ago

Well making sweeping generalizations about groups of people is usually seen as offensive. Then again, I say that as a person diagnosed with aspergers so my opinion of what is and isn't offensive is obviously suspect ;). I didn't downmod you though and i wouldn't have even if i had the karma. Negative stereotypes regarding aspergers are too prevalent to really blame on individuals at this point.

I agree with you about the world not necessarily being entirely rational. I see rationality as a subjective position from which to perceive reality. Another is the self and its intrinsic interests. This is where I seem to fail in my communication with others. This may be a wildly arrogant assertion but I think most people are insanely self obsessed. From this I can understand why empathy is seen as being absolutely necessary. Frankly, I think most people with autism spectrum disorders actually lack the self obsession that would normally be redirected onto others via empathy. This causes a failure to appropriately acknowledge others and with tragic irony a typical individual will ascribe their behavior to self-obsession. Anyway, you mention the learning acquired from considering others points of view. The thought process I've found most rewarding in this regard is to first build up the person's opinion as much as I can and then to attack any weaknesses. The attack is intended to elicit a defense which I cannot conceive. The ultimate aim being to fully understand their position and its legitimacy. Needless to say, this often becomes unpleasant. Likely stemming from my pathological lack of tact :(. The important thing to note is that there are people (at least one person) who are detail oriented. If you want them to "give and come to terms with each other" then you're going to have to endure some ostensible pettifogging. All that being said, there's some straight up nastiness here on HN and much of it is exactly the condescending appeal to immature sciences that you describe.

Oh also, just a note: it's likely that Socrates had aspergers or something similar.

shuaib• 13 years ago

If all my memories are copied over to a humanoid robot, and that robot claims to be me, given access to all my memories. Is he really me? What if the actual me is standing right next to it? Are there now two me? Or is the robot just faking it? But if it's the latter, how do we know I am not faking someone else's consciousness (i.e. not the robot, but I is the one faking)?

dschiptsov• 13 years ago

Some very bright people, notably Chomsky, Minsky and Kurzweil are advocating utilitarian, "mechanical" nature of the mind, which is much more useful than any religious/mysterious crap.

Very crudely, language is just neural network training (due to repeated exposure) and pattern matching on what what was trained. This oversimplified model nevertheless could explain the whole phenomena very well. We do not memorizing grammars, for example, but we are able to distinguish well-formed sentence form nonsense just because it doesn't match the common structure we were trained.

People who started to study their second language as adult would tell you that sentences are not deliberately "constructed" according to the memorized rules as it is when we begin to getting familiar with a new language, but "emerge by itself" after some training. So we have no grammars inside our brain, but a mechanism to train to build up one.

The consciousness, according to the same views, is nothing but a "current working buffer" for ongoing processes, and as some "activity" exceeds some threshold it acquires a "focus" , as if we are "switching" to it.

Minsky have stated many times, that it will require years until people will start using such vocabulary from the world of complex systems in attempts to describe what's going instead of Froidian or common-sense memes.

There is a course based on his Society of Mind book on MIT Open Courseware - very nice talks to listen.

sveme2• 13 years ago

I agree to some extent with your assessment, however, I also had some issues with the original post and could understand the anger of people that delved (much) deeper into the subject. I am not expecting a blog post to be a well-thought and rigorous scientific article, but expect strength in argumentation when extraordinary or broad statements are made. Specifically, he used

* lots of hand-waving arguments (something along "that is contradictory", even though it is not clear why it should be contradictory) * the evocation of quantum mechanics. Whenever I see someone mention quantum mechanics as an explanation without explaining its association any further, a red flag is raised. Somehow the weirdness of parts of quantum mechanics has lead it to be used as an all-encompassing explanation for all other sorts of phenomena. Homeopathy being a prime example. * the fact that current, "mainstream" research into consciousness has been so easily dismissed without knowing something about it (beyond a youtube video).

Some works that I found particularly inspiring (and well-thought) are Thomas Metzinger's work, e.g., Being No One http://www.amazon.com/Being-No-One-Self-Model-Subjectivity/d..., for the layman Antonio Damasio's work, Christof Koch, Francisco Varela, just to mention a few.

digisth• 13 years ago

Getting to this discussion late, but I'd like to add this visualization on different theories of consciousness:

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/what-is-conscious...

artagnon• 13 years ago

For a theory to be good science, it must fit a very large number of observations and not contradict any a single one. Here's my attempt.

We must get a tight definition of consciousness to begin with. Are animals conscious as well (and to what degree)? What about amoeba and plants? If you classify "living" things as conscious, and "dead" things as unconscious, what is your definition of "life"? In their work, various people (notably, Metzinger) have isolated certain characteristics that make up various degrees of consciousness.

The "conscious experience" is a product of evolution: clearly, "self-aware decision makers" have better chances of survival than "hard-coded automatons". In recent evolution, the part that has changed most significantly is the neocortex. Scientifically speaking, it's very easy to figure out what is responsible for a high degree of consciousness: removing neocortex consistently leads to a lower degree of consciousness => the neocortex is responsible for a large part. Dissect, stick electrodes, and get unbiased data: then do a best fit.

Quantum mechanics is quite misunderstood: if you separate out the observer from what is being observed, it looks like humans are operating the universe (because their "observation" causes "collapse", right?). Highly egotistical and inelegant. If you exclude M-theory (because it's not able to make verifiable real-world predictions), a lot of people subscribe to quantum decoherence as an alternative to the classical Copenhagen interpretation.

On conscious computer programs. Essentially, I think of consciousness as a higher degree of interaction with its surroundings (it "learns" from its surroundings and adapts more quickly than it would normally take for natural selection to pick a genetic mutation). Aren't we just describing computer programs that interact with humans via a high-level language?

No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

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