An amusing exercise: Define the word “consciousness” without using any of the following terms:

aware/awareness/etc.
experience
understand
comprehend
concept
think
mind
sentient
psychological
decide/decision

Okay, you get the premise. This is a toughy. The goal is to come up with a functional definition using as much black and white language as possible. Extra points to the definition with the least abstraction. Put your engineering hats on and let’s hear some interesting ideas!

Bonus: Come up with other terms for the verboten list.

consciousness: a sense of self and your situation
The ability to visualize (plan) and conceptualize the future result of an action even without actually having the action take place. Knowledge of the current environment. The ability to understand how actions will effect self and teh environment.

I plan, therefore I am.

Consciousness =Ability to contextualize a given input and provide output based on temporal memory.

The ability to reflect on what happens, both inside and outside your brain.

... but I would say that ‘reflect’ can also be on the ‘list’.

So on a second try: The ability to have a ‘feeling’ about something/anything.

The result of neural activity.

Jan Bogaerts - Mar 31, 2011:

The result of neural activity.

... but what IS that ‘result’ ?

You say ‘a wall is: the result of building a wall’, without giving any hint of what a wall actually IS. Now if I say to you ‘build me a wall’ then you just do ‘something’ and call it a wall (even if it is something totally different) just because it is the result of what you perceive as ‘building a wall’. You can only ‘build me a wall’ when we agree on what a ‘wall’ actually IS.

... but what IS that ‘result’ ?

That whatever is generated. This may be a muscle movement,  a rendering of a muscle movement without doing it, generally, the outputs of the neurons.

Jan Bogaerts - Mar 31, 2011:

That whatever is generated.

So if it generates just a continuous stream of zeros, then by your definition THAT is consciousness ?

You see, if you don’t know what it is supposed to do, there is no goal you can work towards to be able to say; now we have it, it works !

You can not define the result by defining the process, you must define the result first and then define the process on how to get there.

So if it generates just a continuous stream of zeros, then by your definition THAT is consciousness ?

Sorry, some confusion here. I should probably better have said ‘the result of biological neural nets. A modal of a neural net is just that, a model (just like the drawing of a pipe is just that, a drawing). As such, it can only model consciousness.

You can not define the result by defining the process, you must define the result first and then define the process on how to get there.

When we make something, we tend to define the form after it’s function (what do we want, how do we get it). Perhaps in nature, things sometimes work the other way round: something behaves a certain way because of the shape it came in. That behaviour happened to suite the environment and thus, survived.

consciousness: a word in the dictionary between conscious and conscribe

Steve Worswick - Mar 31, 2011:

consciousness: a word in the dictionary between conscious and conscribe

Nice one:lol:

Merlin: Nice definition. The ability to conceptualize events that have not happened and predict possible events may be integral to our notion of “conscious awareness” vs some more primitive awareness of the current state of our environment. I would say though that the phrase “sense of self” falls under the abstract language category thought.

Carl: Nice definition as well. This seems to be in line with what Merlin is saying.

Hans: Yup, I agree. Let’s put “reflect” on the list! As for “feeling”, that one is rife with multiple interpretations as well. It seems the only thing humans can agree on is that we all have them!

Jan: What about animals? Certainly there are creatures with neural activity that don’t also possess consciousness..?

Steve: The most pragmatic answer of all! Though I would say the use of the word “conscious” is a technical no-no.

Okay, here’s mine…

A system that uses information about its current state, as well as environmental information and static information, to influence its current state. The current state information must be accessable to the system in the same or similar manner as other information. So must the information that the system has access to such current state information about itself.

The word “state” may be a tad shady. By that I mean the processes as well as static and dynamic variables that define what the system is. Note that in the case of humans, we do not have information on all the factors that influence our current state in a biological sense (neurotransmitters, bodily functions). This had to be discovered by poking and prodding at people. But we have information on mood, hunger, our current thoughts (and we know about the fact that we have thoughts). This is the level of information that influences our current state and to be conscious we must have access to that information and the ability to use it to influence our current state.

(I guess what I’m getting at here is the difference between “mind” (verboten!) and “brain”. The current values of all the variables which define the system, or “mind”, make up the information that defines the current state.)

Wow, that was very verbose compared to most of these replies. (And included an illegal word..!) I’ll think about this more and see if I can “trim the fat”.

That should be “though” not “thought” in the first paragraph above. EDIT BUTTON!

Jan Bogaerts - Mar 31, 2011:

When we make something, we tend to define the form after it’s function (what do we want, how do we get it). Perhaps in nature, things sometimes work the other way round: something behaves a certain way because of the shape it came in. That behaviour happened to suite the environment and thus, survived.

Interesting observation, Jan. Good point.

I guess in physics, this tends to be more obvious.

Jan: What about animals? Certainly there are creatures with neural activity that don’t also possess consciousness..?

Let me put it to you this way: I stopped (or at least am trying to stop) killing flies. Though I must admit, it seems to be a reflex hard to surpres (my speller can’t seem to correct this).

though I’d have to agree that it’s not the same as ours, or that of other ‘higher’ mammals.