Not to exhume a (very) old thread, but in light of the recent PIT vs CIT "mini" debate, I thought it might be a good time to follow up on this discussion and get a conversation going about how we should define and talk about consciousness in the EG.
As I stated in my reply to the above thread, I have a personal favorite definition of "consciousness," which I don't expect everyone else will agree with, but which I find especially compelling and I think really gets to the heart of what's actually interesting about this topic. This is the definition espoused by the philosopher Thomas Nagel in his 1974 essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" , which has since been picked up and discussed at length by the neuroscientist/philosopher/author/podcaster Sam Harris.
The basic thesis of Nagel's paper is that the central mystery (and definition) of consciousness is the fact of subjective, first-person experience: as he puts it, "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism." There is something it is like to be a person; there is presumably something it is like to be a bat, although it will necessarily be very different from what it's like to be a human; there is presumably not something it is like to be a rock. For us, and likely bats and other mammals, and probably most animals down to, perhaps, insects, "the lights are on" in a way that we generally do not assume to be the case for inanimate objects, or machines, or computers, although if one accepts the viability of Artificial General Intelligence one might assume a computer could have a similar subjective first-person experience if it was configured the right way.
This "seeming," "something it is like to be," "the lights being on," this subjective first-person experience of the world that we all claim to have but which no one can objectively verify, is what Nagel, Harris, and by extension I personally call "consciousness." It does not necessarily entail being self-aware, capable of metacognition, or even having thoughts at all- one could (maybe) imagine a "mind" devoid of any thoughts whatsoever, but which nevertheless has some basal level of experience.
There's a whole host of related concepts which I can see some of you are already familiar with (by the way: if I've been banging on about stuff you all are well aware of, please excuse me for wasting your time and probably sounding like a pompous windbag), such as philosophical zombies, the hard problem of consciousness, qualia, and various other things.
As it currently stands, I think the EG article on consciousness could do with a lot of love, ideally involving adding a discussion of the above topics. As I mentioned earlier, though, I'm aware that the definition of consciousness I've been blabbing about is not universally shared, and I'd be interested in hearing if any of you guys have different ones. I think many or all of our respective views could and should be factored into an updated consciousness EG article.
As I stated in my reply to the above thread, I have a personal favorite definition of "consciousness," which I don't expect everyone else will agree with, but which I find especially compelling and I think really gets to the heart of what's actually interesting about this topic. This is the definition espoused by the philosopher Thomas Nagel in his 1974 essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" , which has since been picked up and discussed at length by the neuroscientist/philosopher/author/podcaster Sam Harris.
The basic thesis of Nagel's paper is that the central mystery (and definition) of consciousness is the fact of subjective, first-person experience: as he puts it, "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism." There is something it is like to be a person; there is presumably something it is like to be a bat, although it will necessarily be very different from what it's like to be a human; there is presumably not something it is like to be a rock. For us, and likely bats and other mammals, and probably most animals down to, perhaps, insects, "the lights are on" in a way that we generally do not assume to be the case for inanimate objects, or machines, or computers, although if one accepts the viability of Artificial General Intelligence one might assume a computer could have a similar subjective first-person experience if it was configured the right way.
This "seeming," "something it is like to be," "the lights being on," this subjective first-person experience of the world that we all claim to have but which no one can objectively verify, is what Nagel, Harris, and by extension I personally call "consciousness." It does not necessarily entail being self-aware, capable of metacognition, or even having thoughts at all- one could (maybe) imagine a "mind" devoid of any thoughts whatsoever, but which nevertheless has some basal level of experience.
There's a whole host of related concepts which I can see some of you are already familiar with (by the way: if I've been banging on about stuff you all are well aware of, please excuse me for wasting your time and probably sounding like a pompous windbag), such as philosophical zombies, the hard problem of consciousness, qualia, and various other things.
As it currently stands, I think the EG article on consciousness could do with a lot of love, ideally involving adding a discussion of the above topics. As I mentioned earlier, though, I'm aware that the definition of consciousness I've been blabbing about is not universally shared, and I'd be interested in hearing if any of you guys have different ones. I think many or all of our respective views could and should be factored into an updated consciousness EG article.
We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say we have been empowered by the universe to figure itself out... and we have only just begun.
-Neill DeGrasse Tyson
-Neill DeGrasse Tyson