Reciprocating Bill
Posts: 4265
Joined: Oct. 2006
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Of course, we are bereft of a definition of "consciousness" in this discussion. Is it like pornography, in that we can't define it, yet masturbate when we see it? Discussions like this always seem to indicate so. Which is not to say that I'm not in on the circle jerk. But points of contact with empirical science are always helpful.
Seems to me that many elements of the human brain and human subjectivity that are crucially important to human consciousness (including the capacity to represent intentions) are omitted when solely considering abstractions such computational models and quantum indeterminacy.
Human cognition and consciousness, particularly at the very high level of representation and meta-representation that is entailed in "purposing" and discerning others' purposes, is clearly instantiated in an integrated symphony (sometimes a cacophony) of neural structures operating in parallel, an ensemble that has an evolutionary history that has yielded a complex, contingent, and often surpassing strange architecture. These structures range from demonstrable streams of processing that support the entirely unconscious visual guidance of motor actions to highly declarative prefrontal representations of others' representations of our own representations (I think that he thinks I am thinking that he thinks that…). And everything in between, from the reentrant wiring of the hippocampus to the limbic engine of affective concerns (that likely solves the frame problem for human beings) to the reverberant conversation between Broca and Wernike's area conducted by means of the arcuate bundle to the goosing of the cortex by sensory input via the thalami. Not to mention non-neural factors such as one's pure physical and muscular embodiment in the world and a lifetime immersion in a social environment that conducts virtually all commerce using a representatonal coin of agency and intentionality.
We are very far from understanding this symphony/cacophony and very far from the point where we need resort to quantum phenomena to account for the complex and subtle behaviors/experiences that emerge from this racket. Which is not to demean those efforts; rather, should a quantum basis for subjectivity be discovered there would still be a whack of a lot of work to do at the level I describe above before we would really understand human consciousness.
BTW, it doesn't follow from the proposition that consciousness is required for purposing and intentions that consciousness = purposing and intention. I have no difficulty envisioning creatures that possess sensory consciousness, yet have no capacity to "intend" in a way that resembles human intentions, even in miniature. As I've said before, that requires a capacity for representation that is clearly contingent upon the sorts of complexities that I cite above.
[minor edits]
[ETA] The arcuate bundle:
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Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.
"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."
- David Foster Wallace
"Here’s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."
- Barry Arrington
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