How did consciousness evolve? - with Nicholas Humphrey 

Sounds like a reasonable way to think about it. The process of ‘becoming’ has to have some sort of framework to attach meaning to - at least in our current understanding of existence. I’ve often wondered if our degree of intelligence and understanding is limited by not only our physiology and the basic capacity of our brain to create consciousness at the level it does, but also by the constraints of the universal laws of physics that apply to the universe we inhabit. It seems quite possible that there exist other layers of reality that are we are currently unable to gain access to, and that remains outside of most people’s ability to even imagine, but which science seems to get more and more hints of its existence. Perhaps the level of consciousness attained by gaining access to these dimensions is something comparable to the difference of consciousness between humans and any of the so-called ‘lower’ life forms in our world.

Yes, I don't know enough about Sir Humphries work to comment, but the way that you have described things _is_ very close to the view of Joscha Bach's. His interviews with Lex Fridman, in particular, are very apposite.

Keep in mind that "sentient" (think about own thoughts) is more advanced than "self-aware" (ouch in paw).

See Daniel C. Dennett and the Multiple Drafts Model. The mind as a virtual machine, fascinating stuff. Cheers!

​@@TomiTapio what is the gist of the distinction, in your opinion?

Well, F U! Friends United

Someone replied to you, but RU-vid has blocked it! {:o:O:}

It seems most people here are really to widen their horizons.

90% of everything is sloganeering and self-adulation. you've just come across a channel where it's not of the "my religion great, my country stronk" type but of the "aren't I smart for watching this" type. amount of people saying anything substantive is about constant

​@@ahG7na4ok

Octopi in particular seem to have some features of awareness that amount to sentence.

Dolphins 🐬

Dolphins are warm-blooded mammals @@farhadsaffaraval7038

@@farhadsaffaraval7038 Dolphins are warm blooded.

Fish might play and and interact with you but they don’t play on their own.

YOUR cat? Uh huh, no. I think it's the other way around. Shes the owner of one human.

@@faizanrana2998 LOL! She certainly thinks she is.🙂

This lecture has a few ideas I remembered from Schopenhauer's World as Will and Idea. I recommend it

I am 71 and I agree with you 100% What a wonderful gentle man he is too.

Watching the monkey, this made me wonder, God is there; we just can not ( or choose not ) see Him 'directly'. I am trying not to use the word " consciously ". Maybe wrongly. Very interesting lecture.

He conflates consciousness and sentience which , according to the dictionary, are DIFFERENT things. Moreover he does not define either consciousness or sentience. This lecture is an utter waste of time if he is not going to do the simple task of defining his terms. Those of you who think this is profound lack the basic education to understand what nonsense this man is spouting.

@@kaoskronostyche9939 so you claim that you need an education about metaphysics and psychology in order to understand what he's saying? But you yourself didn't understand what he's saying? Man that's ironic

So is Descartes, but that doesn't mean he's correct.

And horseshit

He conflates consciousness and sentience which , according to the dictionary, are DIFFERENT things. Moreover he does not define either consciousness or sentience. This lecture is an utter waste of time if he is not going to do the simple task of defining his terms. Those of you who think this is profound lack the basic education to understand what nonsense this man is spouting.

I wish it was all of us .

the guy is seriously delusional

@raysalmon6566 easy to say ...doesn't really mean a lot ..you should explain your reasoning ,enlighten us with your own theories ?

🟠🔻🟦 ⭐🌍☀🌌

​@jmp01a24 say you have no answer when challenged. 😅

I completely agree. When people say things like "octopuses aren't conscious" it's purely due to their brains not evolving to consider their peers - it's a selfish species. It isn't because they don't have the same considerations, they just prioritize things differently, and they store different information due to having different priorities. It isn't because their brains are fundamentally different than ours. For me, language is an emergent property that came about because we are a social species that live in groups, and because our brains got big enough to encompass some complexity in the language. Language helped drive the evolution of the brain onward, since information sharing means that when one learns something, all in the group could learn it from them. It simply means that it's a lot easier to gather more information, so having bigger brains is more likely to be beneficial rather than a waste of resources. Climbing trees and judging whether branches would hold requires a good amount of brain power as well. I think that this is likely to be what started our evolution towards the intelligence we have today.

Ah, but the speculation can be fun. The imagination of trying to imagine what came before the "Big Bang". Was it some sort of alien gun firing off? Or the heartbeat of a multiverse-sized being and we're merely cells within cells? There may not be much use in it but it sure can be fun! :D

I am actively working on creating a conscious AI and this is more or less my current formulation. There are a lot of nuances missing here but just the fact that you are this close means that, even if I don't end up creating conscious machines, the knowledge is more or less already out there and AGI is coming soon.

I agree with you. Consciousness is all about being able to combine. Combine all input off sences. Evolving memory to be able to plan actions. It starts with touch than smell (and taste) and than I am puzzled what comes next? I think being able to hear sound. To be able to see your environment is next. An extra is selecting (recognizing) things. Memory (planning and selecting) gives us the ability to use the input of our surroundings via our sences in a different way.

that might be right as far as it goes but it's important to keep in mind that explaining the utility of higher order information processing is not equivalent with explaining consciousness per se. it's like explaining why some animals fly: there are ecological niches where it's useful to fly. but you haven't explained *how* flight works, the mechanics of it. two different "whys".

I don’t think it succumbs to the homunculus paradox. He’s not saying sentience contains a smaller protoself. He’s saying the self is an illusion created separate from the normal unconscious reflexive system. It’s a mirror of the sensory impulses and reactions. The self and consciences is a new layer of brain activity that creates a representative of the external world in order to influence the autonomous reflexive cycle. There can’t be another layer. It wouldn’t make sense. What would such a layer use as primary sensory data and how would it output anything?

@@rationalpear1816 @rationalpear1816 Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I thoroughly enjoy hearing what others think. I do think your clarification justifies my earlier thoughts though. "...an illusion created separate from the..." Without stipulating how it is created, the creation is not explained and left to magic. Also, "...that creates a representative of the external world in order to..." What is the representative that decides how to influence the autonomous reflexive cycle? Without stipulating the mechanism of decision making, it is unexplained and left to magic. There is also no explanation of how that conscious representative was created. Again, magic. He did a lot of good explanation of the workings of the brain, but then did an unexplained jump to a conscious entity that decides how to influence the autonomous reflexive system.

If humans had always "not troubled ourselves to explain it" we'd be stuck in the dark ages still. Our attempt to explain the world around us has led to all the scientific advances we enjoy today. It also has brought many challenges, which I hope we as a species can work through before we destroy society as we currently know it.

I wish to trouble myself.

Science has provided a whole series of words with very specific meaning such as 'organic' which does not mean 'grown by the system of rotation of crops' rather than provided with chemically derived fertiliser.

I can learn so much better about the content thanks to the main points you gave. Thank you Tammy AI!

@@lilytea3 And it's useful for revisiting stuff to refresh one's memory.

It's not "insight" at all, most of what's said in this video is nonsense. First of all it's totally ignorant of consciousness, because consciousness is neither generated by the brain nor did it ever evolve (and cannot possibly have). The speaker doesn't realize that everything they describe could easily be done in a neuroelectrochemical process without consciousness existing whatsoever, as a p-zombie. Furthermore, sentience has absolutely nothing to do with warm-bloodedness. All vertebrates, arthropods, and cephalopod mollusks are conscious and sentient, and possibly gastropod mollusks as well (that's where the line starts to become blurry).

Your pidgin statement is hilarious. I'm the pet of a very bossy parrot, and he is conscious of everything

LOL! It's junk. Since you've learned to much from this old man, please explain in physical terms what the colors are that I see before my eyes, what sounds are, what flavors are, etc.

@@-_a-a_- they're the physical processes in your brain that have evolved to interpret your surroundings

@@doovstoover9703 I said explain the color green to me in physical terms. I SEE IT - WHAT IS IT! It's not a neuron, it's not an atom, so what is the COLOR GREEN?

@@-_a-a_- what are you asking me for? I'm not a bloody optician

@@doovstoover9703 Are you this obtuse or just not CONSCIOUS? Anyone who is conscious sees colors. Those colors have nothing to do with the photons hitting my eyes as the light is converted into electrical signals. Color is created internally, by the brain, so say the materialists. So, explain what the greens, blues, reds, yellows, oranges, etc, that my brain generates, are in physical terms? An analogy: I see and hear thunder and lightning; a physicist can give me a physical explanation of what it is and I can respond with, "Wow, now I know what thunder and lightning is!" Do the same with color. Tell me what it is. Or, at least, state one physical property of color in order to convince me that color is physical in nature.

Carl Sagan, the renowned astrophysicist and science communicator, famously stated, “We are a way for the universe to know itself.”

He went deep, but not deep enough. Even genius has its boundaries. Cosmic conciousness is supreme human conciousness.

Shutup browski

Ok. So why bird and mammals, but not fish? What is different about the ocean environment versus land? Fish travel immense distances through many different “climate zones”. Warm blood doesn’t change the predator/prey/reproductive dynamics.

@@rationalpear1816 fish cannot be separated from their environment in the same way that land animals can, the instant they are, they start dying. further, a fish does not have to actively change it's own body and behavior in order to survive in the ocean, they can simply cruise along and gather nutrients whilst evading predators, meanwhile warm-blooded creatures on land have to actively fight against their own environment to maintain themselves at optimal level, hence the greater need for more rigorous and nuanced intelligence and also hence the greater need to maintain internal homeostasis regardless of outside factors. because they are on a level separate from their environment that fish are not they can afford to and be benefitted by furthering that seperation of the stimuli from the self via the mind, "internalizing" it to use rather than just react to.

There's also The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul by Ginsburg and Jablonka.

Imagination - as the extension/evolution of the ability to predict future events? Such events were likely connected to SPATIALLY situated "configurations" of major actors (agents: us/me and them/you) and passive objects (tools and environment)... all of this "fantasizing" motivated/directed EMOTIONALLY. Perhaps that's why spatial organizers (parts of hippocampus and entorhinal cortex) and emotion centers (amygdala) are crucial in forming memories: Mostly those situations were worthy to remember (and then generalize and predict) which raised the adrenaline levels above certain threshold and involved higher importance of relative positioning of the animal to objects (eg. possible hiding places, obstacles, etc) and between group members: eg. during a hunting session (most animals experience both sides of the "game") or mating, etc

It is called the state of 'flow' or pure consciousness. I think the monkey example was referring to something else...

Monad (from Greek μονάς monas, "singularity" in turn from μόνος monos, "alone") refers, in cosmogony, to the Supreme Being, divinity or the totality of all things. The concept was reportedly conceived by the Pythagoreans and may refer variously to a single source acting alone, or to an indivisible origin, or to both. The concept was later adopted by other philosophers, such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who referred to the Monad as an *elementary particle.* It had a *geometric counterpart,* which was debated and discussed contemporaneously by the same groups of people. [In this speculative scenario, let's consider Leibniz's *Monad* (first emanation of God), from the philosophical work "The Monadology", as an abstract representation of *the zero-dimensional space that binds quarks together* using the strong nuclear force]: 1) Indivisibility and Unity: Monads, as indivisible entities, mirror the nature of quarks, which are deemed elementary and indivisible particles in our theoretical context. Just as monads possess unity and indivisibility, quarks are unified in their interactions through the strong force. 2) Interconnectedness: Leibniz's monads are interconnected, each reflecting the entire universe from its own perspective. In a parallel manner, the interconnectedness of quarks through the strong force could be metaphorically represented by the interplay of monads, forming a web that holds particles together. 3) Inherent Properties: Just as monads possess inherent perceptions and appetitions, quarks could be thought of as having intrinsic properties like color charge, reflecting the inherent qualities of monads and influencing their interactions. 4) Harmony: The concept of monads contributing to universal harmony resonates with the idea that the strong nuclear force maintains harmony within atomic nuclei by counteracting the electromagnetic repulsion between protons, allowing for the stability of matter. 5) Pre-established Harmony: Monads' pre-established harmony aligns with the idea that the strong force was pre-designed to ensure stable interactions among quarks, orchestrating their behavior in a way that parallels the harmony envisaged by Leibniz. 6) Non-Mechanical Interaction: Monads interact non-mechanically, mirroring the non-mechanical interactions of quarks through gluon exchange. This connection might be seen as a metaphorical reflection of the intricacies of quark-gluon dynamics. 7) Holism: The holistic perspective of monads could symbolize how quarks, like the monads' interconnections, contribute holistically to the structure and behavior of particles through the strong force interactions. em·a·na·tion noun an abstract but perceptible thing that issues or originates from a source.

Metaphysics Context The monad, the word and the idea, belongs to the Western philosophical tradition and has been used by various authors. Leibniz, who was exceptionally well-read, could not have ignored this, but he did not use it himself until mid-1696 when he was sending for print his New System. Apparently he found with it a convenient way to expound his own philosophy as it was elaborated in this period. What he proposed can be seen as a modification of occasionalism developed by latter-day Cartesians. Leibniz surmised that there are indefinitely many substances individually 'programmed' to act in a predetermined way, each substance being coordinated with all the others. This is the pre-established harmony which solved the mind-body problem, but at the cost of declaring any interaction between substances a mere appearance. Summary The rhetorical strategy adopted by Leibniz in The Monadology is fairly obvious as the text begins with a description of monads (proceeding from simple to complicated instances), then it turns to their principle or creator and finishes by using both to explain the world. (I) As far as Leibniz allows just one type of element in the building of the universe his system is monistic. The unique element has been 'given the general name monad or entelechy' and described as 'a simple substance' (§§1, 19). When Leibniz says that monads are 'simple,' he means that "which is one, has no parts and is therefore indivisible". Relying on the Greek etymology of the word entelechie (§18), Leibniz posits quantitative differences in perfection between monads which leads to a hierarchical ordering. The basic order is three-tiered: (1) entelechies or created monads (§48), (2) souls or entelechies with perception and memory (§19), and (3) spirits or rational souls (§82). Whatever is said about the lower ones (entelechies) is valid for the higher (souls and spirits) but not vice versa. As none of them is without a body (§72), there is a corresponding hierarchy of (1) living beings and animals (2), the latter being either non-reasonable or reasonable. The degree of perfection in each case corresponds to cognitive abilities and only spirits or reasonable animals are able to grasp the ideas of both the world and its creator. Some monads have power over others because they can perceive with greater clarity, but primarily, one monad is said to dominate another if it contains the reasons for the actions of other(s). Leibniz believed that any body, such as the body of an animal or man, has one dominant monad which controls the others within it. This dominant monad is often referred to as the soul. (II) God is also said to be a simple substance (§47) but it is the only one necessary (§§38-9) and without a body attached (§72). Monads perceive others "with varying degrees of clarity, except for God, who perceives all monads with utter clarity". God could take any and all perspectives, knowing of both potentiality and actuality. As well as that God in all his power would know the universe from each of the infinite perspectives at the same time, and so his perspectives-his thoughts-"simply are monads". Creation is a permanent state, thus "[monads] are generated, so to speak, by continual fulgurations of the Divinity" (§47). Any perfection comes from being created while imperfection is a limitation of nature (§42). The monads are unaffected by each other, but each have a unique way of expressing themselves in the universe, in accordance with God's infinite will. (III) Composite substances or matter are "actually sub-divided without end" and have the properties of their infinitesimal parts (§65). A notorious passage (§67) explains that "each portion of matter can be conceived as like a garden full of plants, or like a pond full of fish. But each branch of a plant, each organ of an animal, each drop of its bodily fluids is also a similar garden or a similar pond". There are no interactions between different monads nor between entelechies and their bodies but everything is regulated by the pre-established harmony (§§78-9). Much like how one clock may be in synchronicity with another, but the first clock is not caused by the second (or vice versa), rather they are only keeping the same time because the last person to wind them set them to the same time. So it is with monads; they may seem to cause each other, but rather they are, in a sense, "wound" by God's pre-established harmony, and thus appear to be in synchronicity. Leibniz concludes that "if we could understand the order of the universe well enough, we would find that it surpasses all the wishes of the wisest people, and that it is impossible to make it better than it is-not merely in respect of the whole in general, but also in respect of ourselves in particular" (§90). In his day, atoms were proposed to be the smallest division of matter. Within Leibniz's theory, however, substances are not technically real, so monads are not the smallest part of matter, rather they are the only things which are, in fact, real. To Leibniz, space and time were an illusion, and likewise substance itself. The only things that could be called real were utterly simple beings of psychic activity "endowed with perception and appetite." The other objects, which we call matter, are merely phenomena of these simple perceivers. "Leibniz says, 'I don't really eliminate body, but reduce [revoco] it to what it is. For I show that corporeal mass [massa], which is thought to have something over and above simple substances, is not a substance, but a phenomenon resulting from simple substances, which alone have unity and absolute reality.' (G II 275/AG 181)" Leibniz's philosophy is sometimes called "'panpsychic idealism' because these substances are psychic rather than material". That is to say, they are mind-like substances, not possessing spatial reality. "In other words, in the Leibnizian monadology, simple substances are mind-like entities that do not, strictly speaking, exist in space but that represent the universe from a unique perspective." It is the harmony between the perceptions of the monads which creates what we call substances, but that does not mean the substances are real in and of themselves. (IV) Leibniz uses his theory of Monads to support his argument that we live in the best of all possible worlds. He uses his basis of perception but not interaction among monads to explain that all monads must draw their essence from one ultimate monad. He then claims that this ultimate monad would be God because a monad is a “simple substance” and God is simplest of all substances, He cannot be broken down any further. This means that all monads perceive “with varying degrees of perception, except for God, who perceives all monads with utter clarity”. This superior perception of God then would apply in much the same way that he says a dominant monad controls our soul, all other monads associated with it would, essentially, shade themselves towards Him. With all monads being created by the ultimate monad and shading themselves in the image of this ultimate monad, Leibniz argues that it would be impossible to conceive of a more perfect world because all things in the world are created by and imitating the best possible monad.

[2D is not the center of the universe, 0D is the center of the mirror universe]: The mirror universe theory is based on the concept of parity violation, which was discovered in the 1950s. Parity violation refers to the observation that certain processes in particle physics don't behave the same way when their coordinates are reversed. This discovery led to the idea that there might be a mirror image of our universe where particles and their properties are flipped. In this mirror universe, the fundamental particles that make up matter, such as electrons, protons, and neutrinos, would have their charges reversed. For example, in our universe, electrons have a negative charge, but in the mirror universe, they might have a positive charge. Furthermore, another aspect of the mirror universe theory involves chirality, which refers to the property of particles behaving differently from their mirror images. In our universe, particles have a certain handedness or chirality, but in the mirror universe, this chirality could be reversed. Leibniz or Newton: Quantum mechanics is more compatible with Leibniz's relational view of the universe than Newton's absolute view of the universe. In Newton's absolute view, space and time are absolute and independent entities that exist on their own, independent of the objects and events that take place within them. This view implies that there is a privileged observer who can observe the universe from a neutral and objective perspective. On the other hand, Leibniz's relational view holds that space and time are not absolute, but are instead relational concepts that are defined by the relationships between objects and events in the universe. This view implies that there is no privileged observer and that observations are always made from a particular point of view. Quantum mechanics is more compatible with the relational view because it emphasizes the role of observers and the context of measurement in determining the properties of particles. In quantum mechanics, the properties of particles are not absolute, but are instead defined by their relationships with other particles and the measuring apparatus. This means that observations are always made from a particular point of view and that there is no neutral and objective perspective. Overall, quantum mechanics suggests that the universe is fundamentally relational rather than absolute, and is therefore more compatible with Leibniz's relational view than Newton's absolute view. What are the two kinds of truth according to Leibniz? There are two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible. What is the difference between Newton and Leibniz calculus? Newton's calculus is about functions. Leibniz's calculus is about relations defined by constraints. In Newton's calculus, there is (what would now be called) a limit built into every operation. In Leibniz's calculus, the limit is a separate operation. What are the arguments against Leibniz? Critics of Leibniz argue that the world contains an amount of suffering too great to permit belief in philosophical optimism. The claim that we live in the best of all possible worlds drew scorn most notably from Voltaire, who lampooned it in his comic novella Candide.

While I agree with much of the sentiment, I take issue with F. You suggest that life began at the big bang I.e. Panspermia, but I believe that life can arise independently.The most accepted theory for how life began on Earth is deep undersea near hydrothermal vents that expel hot water and minerals. This mix of parts, the solvent of water, and the high temperature is thought to have been the right mixture to create the most simple life forms.

This started well. You lost it at e). AI will ultimately have access to all the infinitely superior sensory data technology can and will provide more or less directly. Thus will it surpass us lest we upgrade our own capacity to access said data...

The warm blooded thing was a bit off for me. He was also dead wrong about Noah's arc exclusive to Warm Blooded animals. There were Reptiles aboard Noah's Arc according to the Bible. Even a parable involving doves and snakes.

@@danyyboyebirds are warm-blooded tho

@@Noobslayar Yup yup.

@@danyyboye he was commenting on the animals in the painting, that the artist had chosen to depict, rather than the bible story itself

Yes a documentary showed an octopus that was purposely scaring fish by flailing it's arms, just for fun. It wasn't hunting, just doing that "Booh!" thing that we humans find so amusing :) The whole empathy thing is probably incredibly hard to find in an octopus because all other life must look so alien to them, and they live for such a short time.

Totally agree; Humphry alludes to the feedback loop (recurrent processing, e.g. Crick and Koch and others). Consciousness is not a stream, it is a vortex of thoughts cycling between external / internal awareness (sensations) and memory. The neurophysiological basis for this is thalamocortical 40 Hz rhythmicity, which is the basis for working memory (WM) or Baars “global workspace”. You cannot stop thinking. You can quiet your mind, but thoughts will inevitably return - bringing back memories. But what if you have no memory? Consider dreaming: you ordinarily do not remember dreams unless you awaken at the end of one, and then all you remember is mostly from WM. If you don’t focus on it, you will not be able to remember it later - yet that does show that WM is always working even during dreams, being the focal point of subliminal associations. Even people with anterograde and retrograde amnesia demonstrate consciousness because they have working memory. But are there individuals that do not have WM? I suspect they would not be conscious. The fact that we are conscious when awake but not when dreaming is due to lack of frontal cortex activity interacting with WM - e.g. executive funcion / attention. In lucid dreaming, when one is conscious during dreaming, it is active. But one can be conscious even with frontal lobe damage! Interesting.

@@thomassoliton1482 great reply. Thanks. I have much to look into. Your post makes me think of Alzheimer’s parents and what their level of self sentences is at later stages dementia.

"Consciousness is quantifiable." -- No it isn't. If you don't know what you are talking about, don't post here.

@@johnnastrom9400 You are wrong. Consciousness is quantifiable. You are either asleep (unconscious) or awake (conscious), and you can quantify how much of the time you are in either state by recording brain activity (electroencephalograms). However, if you think consciousness is something beyond ordinary experience (magical or mystical) then you could be right. But you’re not.

@@thomassoliton1482 -- I am afraid you, like most people, do not understand what the "hard problem of consciousness" is. Roger Penrose and others have spoken a lot about this.

He probably works at it

I do agree that the word magical does apply to the qualia and this explains why the hard problem is so hard. Science doesn't deal in magic.yet.

I think it's a good insight that the qualia are the basis for the notion of self. And that the notion of self can lead to empathy. But I can clearly program an AI to have a model of mind and to behave empathically. So natural selection doesn't need to produce qualia to get models of mind or empathy. It could easily do so without recourse to the miracle of qualia.

The experiment could be repeated.

@@fburton8 - Nowadays, I think you'd find it very hard to get permission to open a primate's brain and destroy or cut the connections to its visual cortex. No (Western, at least) ethics committee would approve that.

It would take a lot more than just not dying after reproduction. They would have to evolve in such a manner where their young would be dependent on their work parents after hatching. There is already a species that doesn't die after reproduction, and yet they also do not raise their young.

You can't direct Consciousness, as you are consciousness. A perceived "person" is merely an object for Consciousness to identify with like a person does while watching a reality show on tv. A.I. can NEVER achieve sentience, period. It will always remain as nothing more than limited inferior programing created by limited flawed individuals. A.I. has as much chance of becoming sentient as a random background character in one of your dreams. It's not possible.

Yes, and if we want to transcend human bodies and upload ourselves into machines we may be actually replacing ourselves with AI that has no sentience

@@yogsothoth00 Well Human bodies are nothing more than a suit we put on for a short time in order to interact with objects and things in the physical realm. You don't need to transcend your clothes, you also don't need to transcend a body. The data we would upload into an android body for example, is not us in any way, it is only 1 and 0's that symbolize thoughts and personality. But the truth is we are not a person to begin with. There is nobody here, literally. Everything we think of as a person is only conditioning running amok on autopilot, we are just silent in the background observing like someone seated on a roller-coaster. We have no control of anything. But like a TV screen that is not affected by what is projected onto onto it, we are also not affected by anything that happens to the body or mind.

​​@@BaritoneUkeBeast4Lifethat's interesting. But what are we really, what's the silence that's watching? Does that mean nothing is perceiving everything? I imagine this is where all speculations are equally valid. But what do you think?

@@akramelmansouri6752 My current understanding is still limited as it is experienced on a conceptual level as an illusory person, not as Awareness aware of itself. My understanding is that the silence is pure Awareness/ Consciousness itself. Consciousness isn't nothing but it also isn't a noun or an object or a thing, more akin to a verb. There are no individuals, you are the only one here, everything is you, and your not a somebody. That's my understanding currenty.

non-humans. Like say animals and the other kingdoms?

Humans can't even definitely prove _to each other_ that they're sentient, so the point is moot. The only one whose sentience I can be sure about is myself. And even that, only on good days. Also, humans _are_ animals (unless your name is something like "Willow" or "Laurel", in which case you're a vegetable).

Of course.. In my humble opinion , A.I. will eventually possess a GREATER level of awareness than humans.. I must disagree with many of the ASSUMPTIONS expressed here as well.. There is zero evidence that any non-physical influences exist within the brain, none.. Dreams, ideas, abstractions, experience of qualia, and EVERYTHING else can be explained as solely physical processes, which I am confident can be EASILY argued.. .

I suppose that depends on how you define sentience. I would say several non-human animals have it already. I would define sentience as the ability to have feelings and possibly caveat it with being aware of your own mortality. I think AI will be capable (and possibly is already) of having feelings. I don't think we will understand those feelings for a long time as we don't have a basis to understand what it means for code and hardware to feel. If they can feel, maybe they can also become aware of their own mortality.

@juliusmazzarella9711 Although I disagree with MANY of your assumptions and general opinions, what I'm responding to is NOT that.. You should check more recent literature where you will find that very sophisticated, self- reproducing artificial CELLS have been created, friend, peace..

Many people feel the same, and many of them put a animals body in front of them for 3 meals a day. Quite odd.

Nine brains ...skin which can see ...a body that can assume the craziest forms nothing much more touchy feely than an Octopus ...and all we know ...at base is ..founded on our senses ...what we feel ... ...One scene ...in My Octopus Teacher ...when the Octopus dances with the school of fish ...It taught me something ...and I've seen Ducks surfing as well as Swans lol...we make these crazy assumptions ..and invariably we are wrong .

Octopi… 🤦🏻

Or DNA, it's the language of life, the code of the program. You must understand the code to read the program. It's not enough to simply examine its hardware

Gibberish, might as well suggest there is an invisible leprechaun.

@@threestars2164 At least it's an explanation (whether you accept it or not), whilst the alternative doesn't actually explain anything because it just leads an infinite series of causation questions: ‘What caused the Universe?’, followed by ‘what caused the cause of it?’, and then ‘what caused the cause of the cause of it?’ … and so on.

@@-_a-a_- That sounds like a dogma more than anything else. Every time I hear arguments like that it sounds desperate to me. A prayer for an existence that isn't inspirational of nihilism. Wishes for cosmic fairness and an afterlife that somehow justifies all this pain. /shrugs

@@Innomen IT'S DOGMA BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS MATTER - THAT'S SCIENCE NOT DOGMA! Particles moving about are just particles moving about - they can't become self-aware and have experiences of things that NOT exist in the material world. The color GREEN, the SMELL OF GRASS, the TASTE OF CHEESE, the SOUND OF A PLANE passing over head - none of those things are physical.

Profoundly disagree. NDE experiences thoroughly refute the claim that consciousness is a product of the biological brain.

@@harryhoudini6964 they absolutely do not.... near death experiences are caused when the brain is just at the tip of dying and releases a swell of dmt to stop itself from being deprived of needed nutrition as it is being deprived of oxygen, and if you understand what dmt is you understand that it is a hallucinogenic chemical, also found in psychedelic mushrooms. we also know that the environment that a hallucination takes place in affects it as the brain converts actual stimuli into something else, combining it with the hallucinated stimuli, this would explain the consistent imagery between near death experiences of "blinding white lights" and "a feeling of warmth and overwhelming love" both of which can be directly explained by the overhead lights of a hospital or ambulance ride, and the sense of connectedness and overwhelming love for those around them that other users report when taking a similar but separate class of drugs like stimulants, more specifically ecstasy. near death experiences do not refute any claim of outside consciousness, you're simply using them as an excuse to not look further into the subject.

@@harryhoudini6964- NDEs could, at least in principle,be explained away as a combination of hallucinations and hoaxes/misreporting. Not saying that’s all they are, just saying that’s it’s not hard to dismiss them if one is a physicalist. But the very existence of subjective, first-person, conscious experience cannot be explained in physical terms, even in principle, and thus disproves physicalism. IMHO. And once physicalism is falsified, it definitely opens the door to stuff like NDEs and psi phenomena. But I’m still not convinced about that stuff…although I suspect that something extraordinary is going on with NDEs.

Still totally missing the point of what consciousness is. What you describe could easily have been done in a purely neuroelectrochemical process without any consciousness at all, as a p-zombie. Consciousness is something entirely different and much more fundamental.

@@hoon_sol Fortunately, the burden of proof for this claim lies on you.

@@GwennDana: No, what I stated above is blatantly obvious already from everything we know about neuroscience and consciousness. A non-conscious robot (p-zombie) could easily do exactly the same things talked about here, consciousness is something completely different. Furthermore it's not at all possible for consciousness to have evolved, especially not under the very premises this man is presupposing; Kastrup has already written about this at length and thoroughly refuted all notions of the possibility of consciousness evolving. And I have no idea why you try to say "fortunately", as if you think yourself lucky enough to be able to cling to all these ridiculous misconceptions about consciousness and evolution; too bad you can't anyway, at least not without engaging in willful ignorance of everything we know about neuroscience and consciousness.

@@hoon_sol To ad hominem-ing in two replies. Marvellous. If it's "blatantly obvious", it'll just make it easier for you to come up with a proof.

@@GwennDana: Nothing in my post was an ad hominem; don't misuse terms you don't understand what mean. It's also rather hilarious how you just resort to ignoring everything of substance to just repeat yourself after I've already explained it to you. Rather pathetic, as expected from someone who doesn't even understand basic neuroscience or basic metaphysics of consciousness.