Even though we don't know how life originated, there's nothing fundamentally mysterious about it. With consciousness, on the other hand, we don't even know what a scientific solution would look like, with many saying consciousness is impossible to fully explain scientifically.
A rock can be explained scientifically because there's nothing it's like to be a rock, so once you've described what a rock looks like physically, chemically, etc., you're done. But if you try to explain everything about a bat, you'll never explain scientifically what it's like being a bat, so that part of it, the subjective consciousness, will always remain inaccessible to science. Or so some say.
Thanks so much for dropping by! As for the mysteriousness, or not, of life, science is still debating if, for example, a virus is alive or not. It seems that there could be a gradient from non-life to fully self-conscious life, where rocks are most probably at the bottom of that gradient, and we are at, or somewhere near the top, with viruses somewhere between rocks and single celled life-forms... Anyhow, there's still not one all-encompassing definition of life, there are several, most describing life not as a thing, but as a process.
Thanks for this nice piece of text. Emergence and reductionism are both needed today in science, and will allow us to learn more from both sides. There are indeed topics that cannot be understood from a pire reductionist approach, as examplified in your blog.
I don't think consciousness originates in the brain. I've seen research that indicates our gut fauna participates in our consciousness, and gut fauna doesn't have brains. There are some other reasons, but they're more difficult to convey, and I reckon that datum is decisive regarding brains being the source of consciousness. Certainly brains moderate consciousness, but if single celled organisms have some, it doesn't come from brains, but something fundamental to cells, perhaps the structures associated with DNA, or it may not be endemic to cells at all.
Frankly, we have no evidence that consciousness is limited to living things at all. While that may seem like a whacko viewpoint, it's a fact nonetheless, and I am not maintaining that the lack of evidence is proof rocks are sentient. I'm just making the point that we literally have no idea what consciousness is, how it happens, or where it comes from. Another startling fact about consciousness is that if our gut fauna are involved in our personal consciousness, that means consciousness is a collective, cross-species matter of some kind.
The moral of the story here is that we're not going to see Artificial General Intelligence in our lifetime. Consciousness may well be emergent, but what it emerges from remains to be ascertained.
What a beautiful response! Thanks so much for that. And I agree with everything you say as well. I'm particularly charmed by the idea that our brain, or brain in conjunction with other body-parts and/or gut fauna, function as receivers of an omnipresent consciousness. Like how you can tune a radio to receive a specific station, our brains could be tuned to receive our specific portion of that consciousness, so to speak. This would also explain how "our" consciousness can change when the brain (the antenna) is damaged...
In the end though, we don't know, so I'm open to all possible explanations...
Even though we don't know how life originated, there's nothing fundamentally mysterious about it. With consciousness, on the other hand, we don't even know what a scientific solution would look like, with many saying consciousness is impossible to fully explain scientifically.
A rock can be explained scientifically because there's nothing it's like to be a rock, so once you've described what a rock looks like physically, chemically, etc., you're done. But if you try to explain everything about a bat, you'll never explain scientifically what it's like being a bat, so that part of it, the subjective consciousness, will always remain inaccessible to science. Or so some say.
Thanks so much for dropping by! As for the mysteriousness, or not, of life, science is still debating if, for example, a virus is alive or not. It seems that there could be a gradient from non-life to fully self-conscious life, where rocks are most probably at the bottom of that gradient, and we are at, or somewhere near the top, with viruses somewhere between rocks and single celled life-forms... Anyhow, there's still not one all-encompassing definition of life, there are several, most describing life not as a thing, but as a process.
Thanks for this nice piece of text. Emergence and reductionism are both needed today in science, and will allow us to learn more from both sides. There are indeed topics that cannot be understood from a pire reductionist approach, as examplified in your blog.
You're so welcome! And thank you for the response and support :-)
I don't think consciousness originates in the brain. I've seen research that indicates our gut fauna participates in our consciousness, and gut fauna doesn't have brains. There are some other reasons, but they're more difficult to convey, and I reckon that datum is decisive regarding brains being the source of consciousness. Certainly brains moderate consciousness, but if single celled organisms have some, it doesn't come from brains, but something fundamental to cells, perhaps the structures associated with DNA, or it may not be endemic to cells at all.
Frankly, we have no evidence that consciousness is limited to living things at all. While that may seem like a whacko viewpoint, it's a fact nonetheless, and I am not maintaining that the lack of evidence is proof rocks are sentient. I'm just making the point that we literally have no idea what consciousness is, how it happens, or where it comes from. Another startling fact about consciousness is that if our gut fauna are involved in our personal consciousness, that means consciousness is a collective, cross-species matter of some kind.
The moral of the story here is that we're not going to see Artificial General Intelligence in our lifetime. Consciousness may well be emergent, but what it emerges from remains to be ascertained.
Thanks!
What a beautiful response! Thanks so much for that. And I agree with everything you say as well. I'm particularly charmed by the idea that our brain, or brain in conjunction with other body-parts and/or gut fauna, function as receivers of an omnipresent consciousness. Like how you can tune a radio to receive a specific station, our brains could be tuned to receive our specific portion of that consciousness, so to speak. This would also explain how "our" consciousness can change when the brain (the antenna) is damaged...
In the end though, we don't know, so I'm open to all possible explanations...
Thanks again! :-)
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