What is the difference between gravity and love? I can show you all sorts of inanimate objects "choosing" to move toward one thing, or away from something else, much like a person might move toward some one they find attractive.
It is a false equivalency to suggest that emotional reactions represent the same thing as basic laws of physics. By the very definition, consciousness is a step removed from the basic interactions involving forces such as gravity. We deem consciousness as special because it represents a complex and dynamic steady state system that is capable of resisting the laws of physics (steady state, not in equilibrium). Inanimate objects do not posses the cellular machinery required for consciousness, so there certainly is no choice involved with the inanimate object.
You take a very scientific approach to this topic, so you of all people should agree that brain chemistry obeys the laws of physics and is merely a very complicated interaction of various physical laws. Thus, there is no qualitative difference between a person driving a car to work and an apple falling from a tree. Both actions were equally the product of natural forces and natural laws.
OK, I can agree with the notion that brains and apples must obey the same laws of physics.
Yet you want to conclude that consciousness is rooted in the brain. However, you are essentially assuming that natural laws -- forces that MOVE things in PATTERNS -- are divorced from any consciousness?
Yes I am assuming that. The basic forces are what interact with each other to produce consciousness. The forces are just that, forces. They are mathematically defined constructs that predict the behavior of particles and energy. That is far different from what consciousness is.
Let's step back and recognize that the brain is a democracy of neurons. Each neuron has a fragment of self-awareness and consciousness. These neurons are born, they serve a purpose, they communicate, they grow, they move, they adapt, they eventually die. You want to say the neurons are entirely divorced from consciousness? That they have absolutely ZERO consciousness?
Depends on how you want to define consciousness. These neurons certainly posses the capability to respond to stimuli in a coordinated and meaningful fashion, but I would not call it consciousness. Here is the first definition of consciousness I pulled off the web, "a. Having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts".
A cell does not have these characteristics. Most people seem to recognize that consciousness is the product of advanced evolution and thus requires a certain degree of complexity that cannot be found in a single cell. Think of how complex the human brain is, or even the brains of lower animals. There are billions of neurons involved in the generation of consciousness.
A human is made up of organs. The organs were once each separate organisms who, ages ago, came together to work together to survive. They all assumed different roles to help themselves survive. Over time, they evolved to better and better fulfill those roles. One such organism eventually evolved into a liver. Another into a stomach. Another into skin. They surrendered individuality for interdependence until they stopped being separate organisms and they merged into one, substantially more complex, multi-organ, organism. This is one of the ways that evolution works.
Those organisms, that we now think of as organs in our bodies, were themselves evolved when various single celled organisms elected to band together, to work together for survival, and over eons developed specialization and interdependence until they were no longer single celled organisms working together, they became the first multi-celled organisms.
Your idea of how multicellular organisms evolved is a a little off. The advent of the primitive multicellular organisms probably involved incomplete cytokinesis or the colonial theory. Anyways, it was a long way down the line before a liver existed as a distinct organ of distinct tissue. The organs of our body evolved as one single organism, just a multicellular organism. Different organisms did not all of the sudden merge as developed organs that just happened to work well together. In my microbiology seminar it was stressed that organisms can only tolerate small changes in information (mutations resulting in evolution). Your idea of a "substantial" increase in complexity doesn't really fit since complexity was increased gradually.
Actual endosymbiosis has only occurred with the mitochondria and chloroplast to my knowledge. In each case there was distinct DNA left for each organelle, and it is the reason you can trace lineages back using mitochondrial DNA. This was not the mechanism for our organ development, otherwise the separate organs would have separate DNA.
You can look back at our evolutionary path and see how this process repeatedly unfolds, and then you can realize it is also unfolding in the same way in the present and future. Are people banding together to form more complex, interdependent entities? It has already happened. Every organization is a collection of interdependent people working toward a common purpose for mutual benefit. We have governmental bodies, corporations (or "artificial persons"), associations. We specialize for the good of the larger organization of which we are part. We have food growers, food transporters, communication facilitators, defenders, healers, etc. Just like your body has white blood cells (defenders), red blood cells (transporters), communication facilitators (neurons), etc.
Organ --> Organism --> Organization
And it is frankly incredibly conceited and short-sighted to believe this relationship does not extend further in both directions ala:
. . . --> ? --> ? --> ? --> cells --> organs --> organisms --> organizations --> ? --> ? --> ? --> ...
I am failing to see the logic here. What is it that you think goes after organizations? You have outlined the evolution of biological life, and I am not quite sure what you are suggesting this means. That something more complex exists? If so, what exactly?
Disputing this, and insisting this relationship ONLY exists in the limited range we can perceive with our senses, is akin to believing there is no life in the unverse except what is on planet Earth, simply because that is all we see. I cannot believe you, as a scientifically minded person, would embrace such a view.
No, they are two separate things. It is likely that aliens exist in some fashion because the same laws of physics applies to the same molecules in other regions of space. I don't even know exactly what you are suggesting, that somehow there is a larger consciousness after death? What makes you think this is true? There is no mechanism to explain it, since consciousness has only arisen from organic matter that is in a steady state. We don't observe that with anything else except the life on this planet.
Anyway, at what point in this evolutionary path do you suddenly think, "okay, NOW conscious suddenly came into being." I mean, can anything be concious if its building blocks are not conscious? Can anything NOT be conscious if its building blocks are conscious?
Would you agree McDonalds ACTS like a conscious entity? It grows, it shows self-interest. It maneuvers in a very complex manner. It is mortal, and it appears to have a sense of its own mortality. How is McDonalds not a conscious entity? No chemical components? Are not the people who run it made up of chemicals? How are McDonald's management's internal memos not equivalent to neurons sending messages around a body?
I think you need to pin down what you mean by conscious. According to my definition, it is relegated to biological organisms at this point in time. This consciousness can not be transferred past death because it is the product of the brain. What is interacting to create this "larger" consciousness you are talking about? I need to know what this thing is if I can make any claims against it. All I know so far is that it is a larger, more complex consciousness. I don't know what perpetuates the consciousness, what molecules are interacting to create it, where it resides, etc... It is very vague, and because it is so vague, it is almost meaningless.
I think you need to look into a philosophical approach called functionalism, as it may help you let go of some of your limited views on consciousness.
Anyway, if it looks like a duck and acts like a duck, it is probably a duck. I think most scientists would approve of such reasoning. When humans engage in patterned movements (dancing, for example), we agree that is a product of consciousness. So why, then, do you dispute that any patterned movement is a display of consciousness? And is not everything in the universe a product of patterned movement? There is no such thing as an inanimate object. A rock is full of particles flying around in amazing patterns. So is a hammer.
Consciousness is much more than just patterned movement. In fact, quantam physics dictates that there are no patterns when you get down to the particles of the rock. It is all random. But even if there were patterns in the electron movement, it still would not represent anything close to consciousness.
Going back full circle, I expect you will try to distinguish between self-propelled movement and movement that is a response to outside forces. However, going back to SCIENTIFIC belief that humans are merely organic substances obeying physical laws, any movement by any human is necessarily a predictable response to outside forces. A man driving to work is no more "self-propelled" than an apple falling from a tree.
But, yeah, you want to believe that the brain is the key to consciousness, that it cannot exist in the absence of this one organic structure. And you think THAT is logical?
I am saying that the brain provides the only mechanism that we know of that can produce consciousness. I guess if
you want to define consciousness as nothing more than patterned movement, then a lot of things would be considered conscious.
Which brings me to my law of similarities. The scientific method is flawed to the extent it preaches skeptism in the absence of knowledge. That means you assume the negative of any proposal (e.g., that the earth ecosystem is a conscious being) in the absence of affirmative proof. The problem with this approach is that it violates something we should all feel is true -- that we are all fundamentally alike, that everything is fundamentally similar. In the absence of any knowledge, you should assume that the unknown is similar to the known. THAT is the law of similarities. Thus, in the absence of knowledge whether anything else is conscious, we should assume everything is conscious like us. That makes a lot more sense than thinking that nothing is conscious unless it has something we, with our limited perceptions, can recognize as a brain.
What? That was wrong on so many levels. Consciousness is an extremely complicated thing that requires highly evolved processes. It would be much more prudent to assume something is not conscious unless it meets some biological standard. There is no law of similarities, that is not even a theory, and I have never even heard of it being proposed as a valid hypothesis in any scientific papers. It sound more like wishful thinking. If it is more than that, please reference the academic journals that describe it.
Perhaps the most well-known variation of the law of similarities is the Golden Rule -- "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." What is this rule based on? The assumption that people are similar, they enjoy similar things. Thus, what you like, other people probably like. If you agree -- as I think most do -- that the Golden Rule is brilliant in its elegant simplicity and truth, then I suggest you consider wider embrace of the law of similarities, on which the Golden Rule is based.
~psychoblast~
So, because humans have evolved empathy via mirror neurons you can extrapolate a law that says consciousness probably exists because everything probably has the attributes that we do. That is really what you are saying?
