
Detecting Consciousness (2017) [pdf] - marojejian
https://www.alleninstitute.org/media/filer_public/3e/7a/3e7aabb0-5da7-4915-b4b6-2aa896c8faee/2017_11_howtomakeaconsciousnessmeter.pdf
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monktastic1
"...when they were deeply asleep and therefore unconscious."

Advanced meditators are able to be vividly conscious in deep sleep. Though
it's probably impossible to describe, the closest might be "consciousness
without content." It's subtle enough that most of us overlook it.

Even something as common as lucid dreaming took centuries to be taken
seriously. The community at large insisted that it was a delusion. We are
probably years away from being able to make sense of the claim that we can be
profoundly conscious in deep sleep. Perhaps that can only happen when more of
us are trained well enough to experience it for ourselves.

I'll be eager to see how society integrates these kinds of understandings into
end-of-life issues, if I'm still around.

~~~
speakeron
> Advanced meditators are able to be vividly conscious in dep sleep.

How can that be known except through self-reporting? At least with lucid
dreaming, experiments have shown communication from the subject via eye
signals[1]. Has a similar thing being done with meditators?

[1] [http://www.historydisclosure.com/scientific-experiment-
prove...](http://www.historydisclosure.com/scientific-experiment-proved-lucid-
dreaming-exists/)

~~~
monktastic1
Great question. I'm not sure the mind has control of the body in that state.
But there's an even more fundamental problem: intention is a form of content,
so one would by definition be out of the state by expressing intention.

I'm sure to some this sounds bogus or like a cop-out. But experiencing it (or
similar states, as can happen with psychedelics) can impact our waking lives
in meaningful ways, so I hope it's not brushed under the rug for much longer.

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danidiaz
I find the wording "detecting consciousness" problematic. They are not
detecting consciousness as if they were detecting subatomic particles in a
cloud chamber, or pollutants in the water; they are just measuring some neural
fireworks that they believe coincide in time with the reported subjective
experiences of the patients.

Then there's this:

> The current most promising scientific theory of consciousness [...] is
> Integrated Information Theory (IIT). [...] IIT emphasizes the differentiated
> and integrated aspect of any subjective experience and postulates that the
> mechanism supporting conscious experience in the human brain’s neocortex
> must likewise incorporate these two attributes.

I don't see any reason why the presumed features of our subjective experience
should be "reflected" in the physical working of our brains.

~~~
canjobear
> I don't see any reason why the presumed features of our subjective
> experience should be "reflected" in the physical working of our brains.

If subjective experience has absolutely no physical correlates then wouldn't
that make it strictly supernatural?

It's a coherent position, but it turns consciousness into an article of
religious faith.

~~~
montyf
Consciousness is supernatural and metaphysical by virtue of it existing
outside the natural and physical world. This is true even if we could prove
that some formations of matter correlated or even had a one-to-one
relationship to consciousness. It's easy to see that the experience of, say,
reading this post exists nowhere in this physical universe. In fact,
consciousness is the only supernatural phenomenon that we know of, and we even
have first-hand, moment-to-moment proof of it.

~~~
tensor
>It's easy to see that the experience of, say, reading this post exists
nowhere in this physical universe.

Never mind easy, I can't see the truth of your proposition at all. Why
wouldn't my experience exist in this physical universe? Everything else does
and we've never found evidence of a single thing that doesn't. That I
experience a feeling of existing in no way at all implies it's not based in
physics.

~~~
montyf
> Everything else does and we've never found evidence of a single thing that
> doesn't.

Right, consciousness seems to be in its own, unique realm in some way.

> That I experience a feeling of existing in no way at all implies it's not
> based in physics.

That must be some trippy physics. It's probably safest to be agnostic about
it, but it just seems absurd to me to imply that a mathematical formula can
produce feeling or experience. How can you describe the experience of qualia
mathematically? I think this is the Materialist view gone a step too far.
Still, can't rule out any possibility if we're searching for the truth.

~~~
matt-attack
They said the same thing about flesh. It cannot simply be made of the same
material the makes up rocks and sand. But it is. They said the same thing
about thoughts, that they are the domain of the soul. But we've now seen that
they're entirely physical and measurable constructs. Same was said about
mental disorders. Turns out they're physical deficiencies.

Wouldn't we learn at some point to stop presuming complicated things to be
non-physical?

~~~
lerno
Let’s assume it is a physical process. We can then recreate it away from a
body. We run the experiment. Something is now experienced. Who is it that
experiences?

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md224
The existence of true unconsciousness is clouded by a seemingly-impenetrable
self-reporting problem:

 _From the perspective of recall, unconsciousness is indistinguishable from a
gap in memory._

There is no way for a person to determine whether they were truly unconscious
or just conscious at a sub-memory level.

(This is why I personally doubt the existence of true unconsciousness. I think
it’s entirely possible that consciousness is uninterruptible, at least during
the lifetime of a conscious organism.)

~~~
kenning
I know this is going to sound bullshit but hear me out. I agree with you,
because when I took DMT it really felt like for the first time in my life, my
brain had been completely reset. I had to re-remember absolutely everything,
including the fact that i existed. This doesn't happen when you wake up,
instead it feels like you just appeared in the real world, having just
recently experienced things in dreams that you may or may not remember.

DMT was not fun, also

~~~
monktastic1
It can also feel like one is not exactly re- _remembering_ the world, but re-
creating it. As if one is recalling the trick of creating the world.

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schiffern
This is fantastic research about detecting consciousness in the human brain
specifically, but I haven't come across much discussion about detecting
consciousness _in general_ , in arbitrary arrangements of matter, and by
_simple inspection_ (by poking it and seeing how it reacts) Poking it is the
traditional way (eg behavioral tests), but that limits detection to only those
conscious phenomenon we succeed at poking, and simultaneously succeed at
detecting a reaction from (eg it doesn't take 10,000 years to react, or emits
chemical pheromone signals that aren't detected/recognized, or communicates
via micro-range RF, or something).

I call this the "intelligent lifeform sensor" problem, after the
implementation from Star Trek.

Consciousness is clearly an information theoretical phenomenon that occurs in
matter. There should be some sort of general information-theoretical
description that applies to matter (be it cephalopods, or rocks, or fungal
networks, or exploding stars, or....)

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snikeris
This is about a new technique for detecting consciousness that borrows from
computer science. I found the article to be approachable by a layman.

