Philosophy Discussion Forums

Consciousness, the mind is a function, there is no doubt that there are other means of creating functions without brains. The body was conscious long before the brain developed, the body created the brain, the brain did not create the body. The brain is a secondary organ in service to the body. When you consider the bodies of other organisms, they to have created brains for themselves as well. Even today one can still survive a long time being brain dead, as long as the brain stem is functioning, for the brain stem handles all the vitals. We need to keep in mind as well that consciousness, mind arose from matter, so when considering the origin of consciousness/mind one needs to speculate just how far down this continuum goes. Plants look after their young and others in the community of the forest, its just to obvious isn't it.

Consul wrote: ↑May 9th, 2021, 11:17 am Note that it is not part of the brain-dependence hypothesis that information-processing is a brain-dependent and exclusively zoological phenomenon! It by no means denies the occurrence of signaling processes in and between plants. However, there is nothing genuinely mental or psychological about the phytophysiological processing of asemantic information carried by physical or chemical signals or stimuli.

QUOTE>
"The authors we’ve discussed [the ones who believe in plant minds or plant cognition—my add.] have moved away from the view that life is cognition. They do not agree that just any biological process is a cognitive process. So which biological processes, from their “biogenic” perspective (…) are the cognitive ones, in their view? They are the ones that involve information-driven biological processes—processes that are not just the result of chemical interaction or mere cell metabolism. They are interested in adaptations and biological changes that hinge on coordinating what the organism does to changing environmental conditions. This is where information comes in. The biogenic perspective describes mechanisms of “sensing.” Sensing is the picking up of information about environmental conditions. The authors also talk about “memory,” “decisions,” and “learning.” But when they talk about these things, they are describing behavior that is adjusted for the information about the environment that is acquired through the sensing mechanisms in the organisms. So what they are calling “cognition” is really information-driven behavior that is adjusted in response to variable environmental conditions.
…
My claim is that the mere fact that a metabolic process or type of behavior is information-driven is not sufficient for it to be cognitive."
(p. 8 )

"I am suggesting that cognition is this kind of information processing which alters the representational format to a different level—to the level of meaning and not just information. …Cognition is about meaning, not about information. So until processing reaches the level of meaning, it is at a level below cognition."
(p. 9)

"Cognition and cognitive processing is not mere computation or information processing. Cognition alters the information processed and structures or formats it in a novel way. It adds meaning and thus much information is either lost or made dependent upon the information highlighted in the semantic content of a cognitive representation.

The use of cognitive terms by plant scientists and biologists who study plant and bacterial behavior, is likely being used because there is no better term for what these scientists have discovered, namely, that these organisms use informational exchanges with the environment and other cells in the organism to guide and control their behavior. That is, they are systems whose behavior is informationally driven.

This kind of explanation rises above mere chemical level explanation or mere mechanical levels of explanation. It is the kind of thing that creatures with minds do, that creatures with cognitive processes do. It is for this reason that these scientists are taking what Dennett (1987) has called the “intentional stance” towards these organisms. Taking this stance is perfectly harmless if one is using it as a mere heuristic device or metaphor, but if one intends the cognitive ascriptions to be true, then it is not harmless. It suggests a notion of cognition for plants and bacteria that means exactly the same thing as when applied to animals and humans. What I have been discussing in this paper is why this attempt seems to fail."
(p. 10)

(Adams, Fred. "Cognition Wars." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30 (2017): 1–11.)
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popeye1945 wrote: ↑May 9th, 2021, 11:26 amConsciousness, the mind is a function, there is no doubt that there are other means of creating functions without brains. The body was conscious long before the brain developed, the body created the brain, the brain did not create the body. The brain is a secondary organ in service to the body. When you consider the bodies of other organisms, they to have created brains for themselves as well. Even today one can still survive a long time being brain dead, as long as the brain stem is functioning, for the brain stem handles all the vitals. We need to keep in mind as well that consciousness, mind arose from matter, so when considering the origin of consciousness/mind one needs to speculate just how far down this continuum goes. Plants look after their young and others in the community of the forest, its just to obvious isn't it.

It's true that there are brain-independent forms of physiological and even neurological information-processing (processing of asemantic signal-information, to be precise), and that brains developed evolutionarily within organisms as a result of the evolution of nervous systems.

It's also true that plants exhibit complex forms of "information-driven behavior that is adjusted in response to variable environmental conditions" (F. Adams).
What I think is false is that their information-driven behavior is based on and directed by genuine forms of cognition (constituted by the use of semantic information and mental representations).

What I think is false is that genuine mentality, i.e. phenomenal consciousness and cognition (properly so called), occurs as well in brainless animals and even in brainless nonanimal organisms such as plants.

In my opinion, by far the most plausible and most justifiable hypothesis in the light of our total scientific knowledge of nature is that genuine mentality and especially subjective experientiality occur nowhere else in nature but in the animal kingdom. There is a (cognitive) psychology of human and nonhuman animals, but there is no (cognitive) psychology of archaea, bacteria, protozoa, fungi, or plants. Whatever information processing takes place in the latter, it is non-/pre-psychological.
(Of course, if "psychology" means nothing but "ethology" = "science of behavior", then there is a psychology of nonanimal organisms, since these do exhibit forms of behavior.)

Consul,
A most impressive post, personally I think we get nowhere when we are invested in dated categorical thinking. All life forms on the planet are related, have the same degree of evolutionary history behind them, and we must keep an open mind as to how far down this genesis goes, we are feeling our way in the dark at present, it will only open out to us if we remain open. Though your input seems quite in the fashion open inquiry, remember the baggage we carry in the long tradition of creating space between us and nature.

Consul wrote: ↑May 9th, 2021, 1:10 pmThere is a (cognitive) psychology of human and nonhuman animals, but there is no (cognitive) psychology of archaea, bacteria, protozoa, fungi, or plants. Whatever information processing takes place in the latter, it is non-/pre-psychological.
(Of course, if "psychology" means nothing but "ethology" = "science of behavior", then there is a psychology of nonanimal organisms, since these do exhibit forms of behavior.)

However, if behavior is more than just bodily motion and McGinn is right, then mindless organisms do not exhibit any behavior—and then you cannot have a pure ethology of organisms without a cognitive psychology of them:

"All behavior is mind involving: action as it springs from psychological traits or states or processes. This already tells us that behaviorism cannot be a variety of reductive materialism, since the very concept of behavior includes psychological factors."

Source: https://www.colinmcginn.net/3129-2/

If that is the case, it follows that if psychological factors are absent from an organism, its inner or outer motions cannot properly be called forms of behavior.

popeye1945 wrote: ↑May 9th, 2021, 1:29 pm Consul,
A most impressive post, personally I think we get nowhere when we are invested in dated categorical thinking. All life forms on the planet are related, have the same degree of evolutionary history behind them, and we must keep an open mind as to how far down this genesis goes, we are feeling our way in the dark at present, it will only open out to us if we remain open. Though your input seems quite in the fashion open inquiry, remember the baggage we carry in the long tradition of creating space between us and nature.

I'm not standing in that tradition, because I've always been thinking that man is wholly (physically&mentally) part of nature and natural evolution: We are animals too!

"We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels."
—Robert Ardrey (African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man, 1961)

I do "keep an open mind" with regard to evidence that may refute or discredit my views; but I don't do so if to keep an open mind is to stay neutral in the debate, i.e. not to hold and defend any opinion. For I think there are very good reasons to believe that the natural appearance of mind and consciousness doesn't precede the evolution of animals, and the evolution of animal brains in particular.

Hi Consul,
I didn't mean to infer that you were not open-minded, on the contrary, I find your posts a step above and shall be reading you as we go long.

Consul wrote: ↑May 9th, 2021, 11:17 amHowever, there is nothing genuinely mental or psychological about the phytophysiological processing of asemantic information carried by physical or chemical signals or stimuli.

As far as we can tell so far.

What is it like to be a plant? If the answer is "nothing", then it's odd that plants would be more internally like rocks than like animals, given that they have far more in common with the latter.

As far as we know, trivial (and surely only trivial) subjective experience may well extend beyond mentality, which may simply be the organisation and amplification of a more fundamental sense of being, generated by the interactions of other body systems.

What is the difference between the most complex reflex and the simplest sensation? Mere technicalities. The difference is logically trivial when considered in context of the scope of mammalian minds.

Like a river or a waterfall, human subjectivity is large. It's loud, and it has layers of organisation. The subjectivity of brainless things may then be thought of as akin to small streams that form during rains - tiny, quiet and relatively unorganised. To what extent can a small stream make an impact a river? To a river, a stream is nothing at all; it makes no difference.

Consul wrote: ↑May 9th, 2021, 11:00 am

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑May 9th, 2021, 5:59 amHow do you know? Serious question. We know that a CNS offers one possible platform for sentience/consciousness/etc, but we have no clue at all about other platforms, if there are other platforms. So we would be foolish, I think, to conclude that the platform that works in humans is the only possible platform.

We know that central nervous systems can realize cognition and consciousness, and science hasn't discovered any other natural/physical systems (or subsystems of physical systems) outside the animal kingdom which are plausibly alternative realizers of cognition and consciousness.

So, because science has yet to discover alternative sentience-platforms, there are none? Absence of evidence = evidence of absence? No.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑May 10th, 2021, 4:00 amSo, because science has yet to discover alternative sentience-platforms, there are none? Absence of evidence = evidence of absence? No.

At least: absence of evidence for "alternative sentience-platforms" = absence of reasons to believe in "alternative sentience-platforms".

As I already pointed out in a previous post, absence of evidence does amount to evidence of absence in case the following condition is met:

1. If p is true, one can reasonably expect to find evidence for p on closer scientific scrutiny.
2. One doesn't find any evidence for p on closer scientific scrutiny.

Are there any plausible scientific models of natural non-neurological or even non-biological "ersatz brains" capable of realizing cognitive minds and especially conscious minds?

Consul wrote: ↑May 10th, 2021, 11:34 am Are there any plausible scientific models of natural non-neurological or even non-biological "ersatz brains" capable of realizing cognitive minds and especially conscious minds?

Are there any neurological models of the mind that can actually produce anything even remotely like a mind?

Same answer.

Not long ago we assumed that birds lacked higher brain functions because they lacked a neocortex, and no one thought the pallium could achieve the same job - but that is exactly what it was found to do.

Can you have a computer without silicon chips? No. Can computation be performed without silicon ships? Yes.

Q.E.D.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑May 10th, 2021, 4:00 amSo, because science has yet to discover alternative sentience-platforms, there are none? Absence of evidence = evidence of absence? No.

Consul wrote: ↑May 10th, 2021, 11:15 am At least: absence of evidence for "alternative sentience-platforms" = absence of reasons to believe in "alternative sentience-platforms".

Agreed. And yet you seem to have missed half the truth in your incomplete summary:

Absence of evidence for "alternative sentience-platforms" = absence of reasons to accept or reject "alternative sentience-platforms".

Consul wrote: ↑May 10th, 2021, 11:15 am As I already pointed out in a previous post, absence of evidence does amount to evidence of absence in case the following condition is met:

1. If p is true, one can reasonably expect to find evidence for p on closer scientific scrutiny.
2. One doesn't find any evidence for p on closer scientific scrutiny.

Weasel words. Yes, there are some very specific and highly constrained examples where absence can be confirmed and verified. This, as we all know, is not the aim or the truth of the statement "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", which still stands, as it must.

P.S. Reasonable expectation is insufficient; proof is required here. This is rather more formal than a casual chat, which is where "reasonable expectation" belongs.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 10th, 2021, 11:51 pm Can you have a computer without silicon chips? No. Can computation be performed without silicon chips? Yes.

Exactly. Computing can be carried out using DNA, for example. [Although there are other semiconductor alternatives to silicon: germanium, gallium arsenide, etc.]

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑May 11th, 2021, 5:45 am

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 10th, 2021, 11:51 pm Can you have a computer without silicon chips? No. Can computation be performed without silicon chips? Yes.

Exactly. Computing can be carried out using DNA, for example. [Although there are other semiconductor alternatives to silicon: germanium, gallium arsenide, etc.]

Nature itself performs calculations of daunting complexity. To quote Richard Feynman:

It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do?