These are all good questions and probably allow our realised thought experiment to gain more insight into what aspects are necessary for consciousness and what are just biological baggage.
We all start as a single cell. What biological event starts consciousness? Keep in mind you can't be half conscious — that's still conscious.
Thought experiment 2
Look at this random symbol: #. What are you conscious of? Chances are, conscious of things, of objects, of elements, of concepts. Things that have some unity to them. But, things are mental constructs, typically socially shared. So, much of the content of consciousness arrived after birth, once we could learn these mental constructs.
Thought experiment 3
What is more complex: a single neuron (with thousands of mitochondria and other organelles, thousands of synapses) or a worm, with only a few hundred synapses? Similarly, what is more complex, your own body or the company you work for?
The final question, about whether investigating consciousness in a post-pandemic world is more urgent, absolutely baffles me. I can’t imagine anything more remote from the pragmatic necessities of readjusting daily life than something as abstract as evolving whole new subdomians and paradigms of understanding.
You have to Google and read those thought experiments to see why. You may not be convinced (I'm not), but they give good reasons. We have mechanistic explanations for all of those organs, and even if we lack some explanation, we know one is possible in principle. They argue this isn't the case for consciousness.
Researchers are determining whether consciousness is a by-product of brain activity. Projects like blue brain aim to make this question something we can answer.
Can you expand on what assumptions we make that are in no way provable?
"how consciousness arises from the brain specifically"
This seems like the most important question in the universe, and one not nearly studied enough.
For instance, the idea that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe that is simply manifested in brains sounds very woo - but hasn't been falsified.
The question of when an animal goes from "unconscious, animate matter" to "thinking self-aware being" seems unclear as well (and is very relevant to medical ethics w.r.t embryo experimentation, etc.)
By comparison to another out-there idea, if we're willing to take the Many-Worlds Interpretation seriously (and enough well-informed scientists do) then I'm not sure it's a _completely_ settled matter that we have a good sense that humans are "fully physical, embodied minds".
However, lead is bad for brains. I think we know that much.
I think (4) gets more interesting if we replace "block of steel" with "fetal tissue" at various stages of development
i personally lean towards (4) for this reason. if we say "soul assignment" is not the answer, then we have to explain how some unconscious cells eventually acquire consciousness, and then go back to unconscious again. one solution is that its been there all along, and is every where.
Perhaps the human brain (any brain?) is just a lens for something quantum, or a radio for some signal? or maybe there are some immaterial forces that we can never observe under a microscope.
Neuroscience has already done lots of investigations as to what's there and why. We know which structures in the brain do what (including "consciousness") at an increasingly fine level. We can observe all sorts of brain disorders and dysfunctions and their effect on consciousness. You can do drugs yourself to alter the ingredients of consciousness.
I think people just don't like how boring the answer is.
Would it help to perhaps, instead of philosophizing, guessing and mathing, to try and look at things that definitely do influence consciousness (birth, death, alcohol, sleep, others) and experiment from there?
No matter how far removed it is from answers, at least you can get some arguably measurable datapoints, compared to guesswork that's a big win!
reply