Re:What Is It Like to Have a Brain?: Nineteen Ways of Lookin...
by PaulDavisThe1st on Saturday October 15, 2022 @10:10AM
(#33214998)
> Subjective experience and the "self" are just emergent properties of the
system
There are other systems with emergent properties where we can explain how the emergent properties are a function of the other properties of the system.
As of now, we can't do that with consciousness and brains/bodies.
Re:What Is It Like to Have a Brain?: Nineteen Ways of Lookin...
by meroes on Saturday October 15, 2022 @12:08PM
(#33215981)
You say on a scale difficult to comprehend. But where's the scale that's deep enough to be incomprehensible? It's usually doubted anything sub cell-scale is responsible (like quantum microtubules of Penrose are almost universally derided) for consciousness.
Subjective experience and the "self" are just emergent properties of the system I described, on a scale that's difficult to comprehend.
> I've always wondered what ultimately makes neurons and all so special that they produce conciousness. Does a rock that undergoes vibrations have some sort of consciousness associated with it, if not much less than what is seen in a human?
There's nothing special about neurons, they are biological systems to encode information from the external world and produce action potentials that trigger other neurons. It's also a misconception that neurons are the only thing firing in the brain. Glial cells also play an important function here. Further, it doesn't make sense to talk about consciousness at the neuronal level. Consciousness is an emergent property of the nervous system.
You can't point to any molecule and call it wet, but a bunch of h2o molecules clumped together have an emergent property of wetness.
Likewise, a rock is hard and if you use it to crack open a walnut, it has physics that relates to the entire object. However, we could explain the entire system at the molecular level but it doesn't really explain the hardness and physical forces that emerge from the rock that allow us to crack a walnut.