indian philosophy presentation

Indian Philosophy PresentationConsciousness: A modern

perspective

Shivam SrivastavaCS10B051

Flow of the Presentation

Some theories on consciousness in the west.

Popular models of consciousness today

Some intriguing questions

A popular quote

“If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would

be so simple we couldn't.”

- Lyall Watson (writer)

Consciousness in the West

• Mind body dualism (17th century)

•The Higher Order Thought theory(18th century)

•Epiphinomalism (19th century)

•“What is it like to be a bat?” (late 20th century)

Popular theories in the past:

Mind body dualism: Rene Descartes

Mind and brain are different things. Believes that the “being” in human being is because of

the mind which is different from the brain. “I think, therefore I am” Describes mind as an immaterial, nonextended

substance that engages in various activities such as rational thought, imagining, feeling, and willing.

Matter conforms to laws of physics. Human body is composed of both matter and mind. Ex1: Willing the arm to be raised causes it to be raised.

The willing comes from the mind which manifests outside.

Ex2: We can only see with the eyes, hear with the ears and so on. But we can think and imagine anything with the mind. So mind is not restricted to matter.

Higher Order Thought: Leibnitz A mental state is conscious only if one is

aware of that state. We are aware of mental states that are

conscious by having a thought that one is in that state. These are the higher order thoughts.

One is conscious if one is able to report it. Otherwise the person is not conscious.

Example, while sleeping one doesn’t know that he/she is sleeping. So it is not a conscious state.

Epiphinomalism: Thomas Huxley Mental events are caused by physical events in

the brain. The relationship between mind and brain is like

the relationship between the steam-whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine and the engine itself.

Just as the steam-whistle is caused by the engine’s operations but has no causal influence upon it, so too the mental is caused by the workings of neurophysiological mechanisms but has no causal influence upon their operation.

What is it like to be a bat?-Thomas Nagel How can we say that a living thing is conscious without

experiencing things from its perspective?

One can never imagine what it would be like to be that living thing, so one cannot conclude whether the living thing has a conscious experience or not.

Ex1: A bat has experience. So there is something that it is like to be a bat. But their means of perception is different from ours. So we can never imagine what it would be like to be a bat. So to conclude that it has no consciousness would be wrong.

His theory can also be seen in terms of a famous quote: “Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches.”

Popular models today

Mind as an iceberg

Psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud (author of Dreams).

Mind has 3 parts: Conscious: Includes everything we are

aware of. Close to the preconscious level with which it interacts.

Preconscious: Represents ordinary memory. Helps retrieve information to consciousness.

Unconscious: The reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges and memories. Ex: responsible for heart beats.

The collective consciousness: Douglas Hofstadter (author of GEB)

Approach from a Computer Science point of view. Both hardware and software exist in the brain. Explains it with the analogy of an ant colony. Individual ants seem to cooperate as teammates

and not randomly wander off. Over years of evolution, the ants have reinforced themselves into a collective behavior that results in an ant colony.

Just like ants interact through chemicals (signals), the neurons interact using chemicals as well.

The signals are low level active sub systems of a complex system. These signals trigger other signals.

Collective consciousness (contd) A single ant does not carry any information about

the colony structure. Then who is controlling the building of the structure?

The answer is that every ant has a “built-in” hardware according to which it behaves. This behavior leads to the collective behavior of building the colony. Our neurons similarly have built-in properties. These properties are very basic.

Intelligence is produced on top of this hardware. Just like any program can be written on a computer, any thought can occur on top of the hardware of the brain.

If some ants can build a colony, then a billion neurons can help see, hear, taste, feel etc.

Hofstadter on intelligence

Words, messages, stories, pictures stay in some form in our brains. These form the “data” or “programs” stored in our brains.

Just like we have regions specialized in hearing, seeing etc, we have regions which operate on this “data” and infer something new.

Why all these rules is still unclear. But he believes that there is an underlying commonness among all the human minds. This common mind is called the “Noosphere”.

Several other models, but no time.So let us move onto ...

Questions to think about

Are humans the only conscious species?

•Depends on how we define consciousness. Still an area of research.

•Tests conducted suggest that animals like elephant, dolphins, apes are self-aware.

•Elephants recognize themselves in a mirror, can paint etc.

• Parrots can “learn” language.

•Humans considered to be most “aware”. This suggests there are levels of consciousness.

Future - Machine Consciousness?

My opinion about consciousness There are levels of consciousness. To the ant, for instance,

what kills it the next moment is not known, but we can decide its fate. The ant has its own level of consciousness.

Similarly as we go up the hierarchy, the level of consciousness increases.

Extrapolating this implies that there are levels we are not aware of and there are things not in our control.

The ant hasn’t seen the entire earth, so to it that is the universe it is unaware about. Similarly, we are restricted to our level of existence and are unaware about the “universe”.

So in my opinion, we are just another species staying at our own level of consciousness and there are higher ones we are not aware of.

My opinion about the quote

As stated in yesterday’s presentation that there are softwares which can build other softwares themselves.

Then these softwares can build softwares that can build software themselves too.

If this is true, then it is possible that a human brain understands a human brain itself.

Some questions still unanswered Just like humans thought once upon a time that earth is

flat and then later discovered the true nature, is soul something which still needs to be understood, given that it exists?

Why do we live in a world of rules and methods? Why is there an order to everything? For example, why are we designed to survive only on oxygen and not just anything?

There is some correlation between the ratio (brain size/body size) to the amount of understanding of the world. This is in context of all the species on the planet. So are we really restricted by our brains to achieve the supreme level of understanding? Or is there an immaterial soul which is unrestricted by physical size?

Your opinion?