Consciousness and the World

[boagie]

Originally Posted by paulhanke

... so let's take it a step further - as the quality of consciousness changes, does the experience of consciousness change?

paulhanke,

The experience of consciousness is the quality of consciousness, you have heard perhaps it said that, the quality of ones mind depends upon what it has to think about, if there is nothing to think about, there is no mind. There is the given organic condition of the brain, but, assuming that is healthy, the art of consciousness would depend on the quality of the materials and the order consciousness bestows upon it.

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by boagie

There is the given organic condition of the brain, but, assuming that is healthy, the art of consciousness would depend on the quality of the materials and the order consciousness bestows upon it.

... makes sense ... if I were born in medieval times, my experience of consciousness would be that of a medieval person; but if the current "I" were transported back to medieval times, my experience of consciousness (ignoring the astonishment at finding myself back then) would still be 21st-century-based ... which implies that no matter how much I read from the past, I can never truly comprehend what the past was like (?) ...

[boagie]

Originally Posted by paulhanke

... makes sense ... if I were born in medieval times, my experience of consciousness would be that of a medieval person; but if the current "I" were transported back to medieval times, my experience of consciousness (ignoring the astonishment at finding myself back then) would still be 21st-century-based ... which implies that no matter how much I read from the past, I can never truly comprehend what the past was like (?) ...

Paulhanke,

I am in full agreement with you here, reading a historical text one can get the feeling that you know the times, but it is an illusion, mind you a pleasant one for the most part, it adds to the pleasure of reading a historical novel.

[Doobah47]

Originally Posted by paulhanke

Taking Clark's concept of "external scaffolding" to its logical conclusion, do you think there are elements of the world without which there could not be (modern) human consciousness?

This notion of specifically 'human' consciousness is rather belittling to other forms of existence, but they probably do not recognize that we understand many more things than we need to. So this support of the individual's interaction with reality, the 'external scaffolding', could possibly be provided for other forms of life; if we were to build a system that could cause wild animals to coexist harmoniously with humans, providing food for lions would register as a form of external scaffolding for the lion, the next step is to cause the lion to acquire food passively itself - without aggression - thus finishing with the 'external scaffolding' and achieving a deviation from 'natural' evolution.

The difference between this example of the lion, and the use of logical systems by humans is the control of the scaffold by the individual seeking the benefits. Could it be possible to teach a lion to use an 'external scaffold', a system of farming food for itself, thus negating it's current method of claw-to-mouth hunting. What sort of 'external scaffold' could one impose upon the lions' perception to force it to engage with such a system? Imprisonment is a form of scaffold, one is caused to climb up, into the mind, instead of wandering and hunting. Is anybody in agreement with the previous statement?

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by Doobah47

The difference between this example of the lion, and the use of logical systems by humans is the control of the scaffold by the individual seeking the benefits. Could it be possible to teach a lion to use an 'external scaffold', a system of farming food for itself, thus negating it's current method of claw-to-mouth hunting.

... and I think this difference may be key - in the former example where humans impose an artificial environment on the lion, exactly what is the external scaffolding and for whom? ... is the artificial environment scaffolding for the lion, or is it just a new environment? is the artificial environment created by the human scaffolding for the human? is the artificial environment and the lion scaffolding for the human? is none of it scaffolding (i.e., does this construction miss Clark's point of scaffolding-as-supporting-cognitive-abilities-beyond-human-capability entirely)?

As for the latter example, do lions already employ external scaffolding? ... that is, is there anything in a lion's natural environment that allows them to reason in ways that would otherwise be beyond their reasoning capabilities? ... say, habitually peeing on the landscape in order to recall their (and other lions') territorial boundaries?

As for teaching lions to farm, there may be some potential forms of scaffolding that are entirely beyond the mental sophistication of such a being ... and what does that say about us humans? ... are there potential forms of scaffolding that are beyond our mental sophistication? are there potential forms of scaffolding that are beyond our mental sophistication but within reach of our cultural sophistication?

[boagie]

paulhanke,

When one takes an animal out of the relational complex which is its environment one changes the animal not to a different animal but to a
monstrosity a muted form of life. I have a little difficulty with this term forms of scaffolding, does scaffolding refer to the aspect of the creatures environment which evokes certain behaviour, and if one were able to present such an altered environment that would make new demands of said creature that it would transform the said animal into something akin to improvement, progress? Nature does this of itself over eons, but as with the physical world and an organisms adaptation there is no progress there is no moving towards perfection, there are simply two unending processes one the animal in constant struggle to adapt to the greater presence and process of the earth, and the earth one would suppose is altered by the cosmos which it inhabits. If I am off the mark here would you please define in detail the meaning of this scaffolding, as I cannot imagine it as anything but environmental engineering. Actually this is occuring as we speak in the negative sense, man has transformed the earth to the point of the mass extinction of species.

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by boagie

... please define in detail the meaning of this scaffolding, as I cannot imagine it as anything but environmental engineering.

... maybe I can explain by example ... take long division - this is not a procedure most people can do in their head in its entirety ... but people can estimate the single steps of the procedure in their head - it's the amount of working memory that's required that poses the problem ... this is where pencil and paper become "external scaffolding" - pencil and paper provide an external memory bank for the biological brain ... and such scaffolding is not necessarily limited to simple external memory.

To quote Clark directly:

In general, evolved creatures will neither store nor process information in costly ways when they can use the structure of the environment and their operations upon it as a convenient stand-in for the information-processing operation concerned.

The combination of basic pattern-completing abilities and complex, well-structured environments may thus enable us to haul ourselves up by our own computational bootstraps.

[boagie]

paulhanke,

Ok, I think I get it now, your scaffolding is what I would call biological extension, the pen and paper are an extended system of your biology. Actually to my way of thinking, everything man has created, agriculture, society, technology, arts and sciences are all biological extensions or as you put it, scaffolding. I am on track here?

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by boagie

I am on track here?

... perfectly! ... (but as usual I have to resort to quoting others to get my thoughts across - I totally suck at explaining myself! )

As Clark asserts, such scaffolding can greatly enhance the computational capabilities of a being ... I'm just wondering out loud if something similar can be said for consciousness ... is there anything in the world that we human beings leverage in order to greatly enhance our consciousness? is a computational enhancement sufficient for a consciousness enhancement? or does a consciousness enhancement require more than just a simple computational enhancement, implying a qualitatively distinct type of scaffolding than the computational examples Clark gives?

[boagie]

Originally Posted by paulhanke

... perfectly! ... (but as usual I have to resort to quoting others to get my thoughts across - I totally suck at explaining myself! )

As Clark asserts, such scaffolding can greatly enhance the computational capabilities of a being ... I'm just wondering out loud if something similar can be said for consciousness ... is there anything in the world that we human beings leverage in order to greatly enhance our consciousness? is a computational enhancement sufficient for a consciousness enhancement? or does a consciousness enhancement require more than just a simple computational enhancement, implying a qualitatively distinct type of scaffolding than the computational examples Clark gives?

paulhanke,

Just thinking out loud here. All of humanities creations are a product of its existing consciousness, I believe all of man's creations add to this consciousness. It is an interesting thing about any existing system, it is bound to have as it constitution, elements of a previous simplier system or systems. So, as the system develops in complexity from a former simplier model, it is itself reprograming the mind that creates it, as it creates it. Just as order builds on order in the exterior world so to it must be with the innner world of the mind, with each development of a complex system by its creator, new neural pathways are created---------maybe!