Are plants conscious?

[Write4U]

But it is not parsimonious for life to arise from matter or complex life forms to arise from simple ones. At some point, the development of things in this world rejected mere form following function (aka parsimonious) and upped the anti for function to lead the way.

This is why Hameroff and Penrose propose that while survival to reproduce is fundamental, the urge to actually mate for procreation is derived from the experience of "pleasure", a parsimonious state of organization.
Note: sentience is not the same as intelligence and does not necessarily require a brain at all. What we call pleasure is from the production of Dopamine.. But there may many other mechanisms that produce a physical state of parsimony in non-brained organisms.
In fact Penrose proposes that this phenomenon already occurs abstractly in "bonding" at quantum level.

I mentioned the Table of Elements before. One can readily see that the protons, electrons, and neutrons are all arranged in specific and orderly mathematical patterns, which we attribute to the "attractive" properties between those quantum particles. Certain elements lack this stability and become radio active.

Radioactive Decay
Radioactivity is the spontaneous disintegration of atomic nuclei. This phenomenon was first reported in 1896 by the French physicist Henri Becquerel. Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie contributed further to the understanding of radioactivity. Their research led to the discovery of two new radioactive elements, polonium and radium, and forced scientists to change their ideas about the structure of the atom.

Radioactivity is the result of an atom trying to reach a more stable nuclear configuration. The process of radioactive decay, can be achieved via three primary methods; a nucleus can change one of its neutrons into a proton with the simultaneous emission of an electron (beta decay), by emitting a helium nucleus (alpha decay), or by spontaneous fission (splitting) into two fragments. Often associated with these events is the release of high energy photons or gamma rays. There are some other method of radioactive decay, but they are more exotic in nature.

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Physics/Physics5.shtml

The same thing happens with building molecules. Their mathematical arrangements are always parsimonious. If not, they become unstable and revert to a simpler state.

As iceaura has been pointing out, appreciating such things arises from sentience. Maths is just maths. There is no "elegance" to a random group of integers over a sequence unless you want to introduce sentience. Given that attributing sentience to the universe does not appear to be a page from your "player's manual", it's unclear where you are trying to take this.

In my book all of the universe is mathematical in essence and with that I mean everything has a specific "value". When these values are "compatible" they will bond and form patterns, starting at quantum (atomic) level to complex organisms. All are fundamentally arranged by their mathematical values each which reinforces the whole. That is the Evolutionary process.

Mutation and Natural Selection are natural probabilistic events. The more complex the organism the greater the probability for something going wrong and the mathematical processing between the system's information network becomes injured or is broken, usually results in detrimental effects, but once in awhile the error results in a beneficial trait to the organism. A beneficial "mutation". Of course the next day a meteor may smash on top of that organism and that would be "natural selection".....

But considering the astronomical mathematical values we are dealing with, any beneficial traits usually will survive and gain an advantage in survivability in order to find a mate.....

IMO, Sentience is the ability to experience change in "some form" of symmetry between comfort and discomfort by the exchange of information mathematical or biological in the functions of the organism, must be present because it provides "motive". And self-aware motivation provides purpose and meaning to the whole of the organism.

My cat can't wait until I sit down to watch TV, the moment I am comfortable, he is on my chest, purring and scenting me with his cheeks. He knows that when I stroke him his personal goal to be stroked will have been achieved. Parsimony.

As I understand Penrose, he thinks it goes even deeper.

 

[Musika]

I am not. Once again, there is no "banner" denoting consciousness; no finish line that you have to cross to gain that title. It is a continuum.

The filters of consciousness are a continuum. For instance an addicted or nonaddicted individual has reduced or increased scope for performance according to the aperture of their filter. Its not their consciousness that changes (in their self same body) but rather their outlook.

There are things that are minimally conscious and things that are very conscious.

Or alternatively, there are things that are conscious and things that are not conscious. Conscious things are imposed with various filters (such as their body or habits/behaviours). These filters give rise to a range actions which can grant greater or lesser perception of things. Unconscious things (such as ai) can be overlaid with the protocols of a filter, but this merely gives them the dissemblance of consciousness. So you can make an ai that "acts" like an earthworm or even a drug addict, but it is not conscious, so it will not ultimately "see" the world as one.

So if something acts against its self interest it is not conscious?

No.
If something has no self interest, it is not conscious.

Given the numerous examples of people (and human-bred animals like dogs) acting against their self interest in pursuit of an externally imposed goal - or even acting out of a desire for self destruction - that's not really an argument against consciousness.

The perennial conflict between the perceptions of long term and short term benefits is an even more complicated realm that takes us even further away from what is capable of ai. There is another thread here about whether ai can develop mental illness. I haven't looked at it closely, but the very title suggests they have brought more than one horse before the cart.

I have a car that will do hands-off driving. It has never had to brake hard or swerve to avoid a pedestrian. It has, in the 20,000 miles I've driven it, had to make one evasive maneuver and one panic stop. Which corresponds pretty well to the rate of TCAS TA's and RA's that most pilots individually see i.e. once in a great while.

Planes are essentially vehicles with no brakes that crash unless they have a designated place to stop. Obviously a critical manouver in a plane takes a different form than a car.

An aircraft's working environment, at least compared to cars with their windows of response time to collisions in response to multiple hazards, is many times less complex ... and that is just when you isolate driverless cars to freeways and other simplified environments they currently function on. If you want to move into congested urban environments, then the complexity of hazards grows exponentially ... hence the experience of an ai car of 1000's within minutes (even if you aren't periodically thrown around in your seatbelt).

You are saying "AI's give lawyers better tools to sue for damages and to prosecute charges."

I am saying there is a whole realm of law beyond suing for damages - namely culpability (manslaughter, etc). Maybe its different in the states (the "home of the ridiculous law suit"), but practically everywhere else it represents a different kettle of fish. (Actually IIRC, even in the states rolled out a mandatory framework for ai standards, much to the hand wringing of the tech giants).

Agreed. So do police body cameras, and cockpit voice recorders, and security cameras. Again, that does not mean that cars will have to solve trolley problems.

In this case however it is the individuals employed by the manufacturer of the trolley who runs the potential of being liable (and not just in the sense of a corporate pay out for damages).
IOW the fact that individuals within the manufacturing body may be liable to "trolley problems" indicates a new field .... and as it pertains to the OP, no one is talking about making the cars themselves culpable (since everyone clearly sees ai (artificial intelligence) as a but a transparent medium to the real ai (actual intelligence) driving the machine. IOW you just have to look at whose feet everyone will lay the blame at in the event of a catastrophe to clearly see how convincing this "independant ai" argument is.

Probably. And if a cop is caught on camera doing something illegal, prosecutors will likely go after the cop, the cop's supervisor, the guy who wrote the training syllabus for the cop etc.

Unless the law enforcement agency is tremendously corrupt and dysfunctional, the charges of culpability begin and end with the cop (very few legal agencies in the civilized world have a policy endorsed by management of shooting non threatening unarmed people on sight, for instance)

Again, that's not because the cop didn't successfully solve the trolley problem. It's because we live in a society where everyone sues for everything.

The problem arises when you try to engineer a protocol for a trolley problem response in ai and you (the programmer) read the data wrong. So you have a driverless vehicle taking evasive action in a scenario where a trolley problem response wasn't warranted (like say, swerving to avoid a piece of cardboard and killing a pedestrian in the process)

 

[Musika]

So?
What difference does it make here, for the purpose of this thread, who did the synthesis?

Ok, for the severely abridged version ....

It basically arose from abiogenesis illustrating a necessarily reducible model for consciousness. Consciousness arose (or emerged) from matter, therefore consciousness must have no intrinsic quality beyond matter (so there is no ontological divide between ai and life, as far as consciousness is concerned).

However, if all that can be demonstrated in the direction of abiogenesis is the synthesis of chemicals life utilizes (as opposed to the ?bio?synthesis of life), the clear divide between what can and cannot be ?bio?/synthesized spells the margin that one cannot exclude dualism from the path of inquiry.

So posing a materially reducible anecdote for consciousness could be so much of the cat that never went up that tree, despite the extent of the barking that goes around the base of it.

IOW purposely keeping it vague about exactly who is doing the "synthesizing" and to what ends seems to be a ploy to throw an ai spanner into the problem of consciousness.

 

[iceaura]

However, if all that can be demonstrated in the direction of abiogenesis is the synthesis of chemicals life utilizes

We have clearly demonstrated the synthesis of a living being from non-living chemicals, as a routine event in the world around us.
Every conscious being we know of, like the unconscious ones, grew from being synthesized in this fashion.

Consciousness arose (or emerged) from matter, therefore consciousness must have no intrinsic quality beyond matter

I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean. Clearly many patterns emergent from substrates have properties, features, qualities, etc, that their substrates do not possess - that's a general truth of patterns and substrates. Quarks do not burn. Water molecules do not freeze. Chitin does not buzz, bite, or fly. Neurons do not think.

 

[Write4U]

Neurons do not think.

But do they "experience"?

 

[iceaura]

All organisms sacrifice significant survival probability - often all of it - for reproduction.
As a general statement one can make that argument, but it is more complex than that.

It's not an argument, it's an observed fact.

Their own survival is no longer required.

Thus the the million sterile workers' and soldiers' purpose is to keep the queen alive. Their lives have no reproductive meaning per se without a queen to serve.

And so we see that survival is merely one of several possible immediate and contingent priorities a living being may have, and is always a temporary one.

Neurons do not think.
But do they "experience"?

Suit yourself - they do not, as substrate, share the emergent properties of the living brain, much less the mind.

 

[spidergoat]

bio?/synthesized spells the margin that one cannot exclude dualism from the path of inquiry.

You can inquire about dualism all you like, there's still no evidence that life is anything other than chemistry.

 

[Musika]

You can inquire about dualism all you like, there's still no evidence that life is anything other than chemistry.

On the contrary, its apparent to anyone who has shaken a dog's back leg in the general direction of biology and chemistry, there is quite a lot of inquiring going into proving what you claim there is no evidence of.

 

[RainbowSingularity]

type of consciousness

here i think we have a dawning reality of the evolution of the human mind.
it is only in th elast 30 to 50 years that the majority of modern western folk can conceptualise different types of consciousness.

 

[RainbowSingularity]

When there is a choice, the decision will always be in the direction of "optimal parsimony".
Thus when a person makes a choice it appears to be from free will, but in reality the choice is already present in latent form before the choice is made, IMO.

physics meets biological mechanisms etc...
fascinating and (to many)very scary.

e.g "why do i pick my nose in public when im lying" ?
"do i really have free will?" err-go panic attack about if they can resist buying the latest chinese apple iphone

 

[Write4U]

And so we see that survival is merely one of several possible immediate and contingent priorities a living being may have, and is always a temporary one.

Except insects have been doing just fine for millions of years....... and when the temporary life of homo sapiens comes to an end the insects will still thrive ........ Hive minds seem to acquire their own awareness and response mechanisms.

 

[spidergoat]

On the contrary, its apparent to anyone who has shaken a dog's back leg in the general direction of biology and chemistry, there is quite a lot of inquiring going into proving what you claim there is no evidence of.

So, you claim some scientists have a conclusion about the non-physical and are looking for evidence to prove it? Those aren't scientists! Because science doesn't work like that.

 

[iceaura]

Except insects have been doing just fine for millions of years.

Maximum lifespan of any insect is something like 25 years. Median would be closer to 25 days. So no exceptions there.
And quite limited consciousness - not zero, maybe, but not given to reflection.

Meanwhile, we seem to be revisiting the long-defunct billiard ball model of bottom-up preset mechanical fate. As if substrate determined pattern, ever.

One can't help but speculate that in such a view the difference in consciousness between a plant and a person would be largely illusion - the one with no more freedom of choice than the other, would imply no actual role for consciousness.

 

[sideshowbob]

It may simply boil down to complexity that we cannot yet achieve.

We might not be able to build a mountain, with its complex arrangement of complex crystal structures, from scratch yet. We might not ever be able to. But that doesn't mean there is some magical effect that we can't duplicate. Same with cells.

 

[sideshowbob]

What's the difference between synthesis and reproduction?

One is exclusively performed by the host. The other isn't.

To be more specific: What is chemically different between synthesis and reproduction?

When you should be talking about "arranging the chemicals" by the the living things( ie, the host).

What difference does it make whether the chemicals were poured into a test tube by a "host" or they just happened to drift past each other in some scummy pond? How do the chemicals "know" about a host?

Perhaps you could provide an example of arranged chemicals that confuse the definition of a "real" life form.

I'm just asking how, at the chemical level, there can be a difference between an arrangement of chemicals and the same arrangement of chemicals. If you look at an arrangement of chemicals, can you tell how they got arranged that way? Is there "history" written on them?

 

[billvon]

So they synthesized a chemical that life utilizes, and applied it to a living cell.

Right. They synthesized the genome and stuck it in a cell. The genome then 'took over' and directed reproduction.

This proves there is or there is not no distinction between synthesizing life and the chemicals life utilizes?

It proves that there is no difference between "natural" and "synthetic" genomes/proteins/enzymes etc.

 

[billvon]

The filters of consciousness are a continuum. For instance an addicted or nonaddicted individual has reduced or increased scope for performance according to the aperture of their filter. Its not their consciousness that changes (in their self same body) but rather their outlook.

If you have ever seen an addict during a high, or during withdrawal, you would not think that "only their outlook" changed.

Or alternatively, there are things that are conscious and things that are not conscious.

Again, it's a scale, it is not a binary decision.

Conscious things are imposed with various filters (such as their body or habits/behaviours). These filters give rise to a range actions which can grant greater or lesser perception of things. Unconscious things (such as ai) can be overlaid with the protocols of a filter, but this merely gives them the dissemblance of consciousness. So you can make an ai that "acts" like an earthworm or even a drug addict, but it is not conscious, so it will not ultimately "see" the world as one.

Nope, sorry. You may prefer biological systems to mechanical or electronic ones. Doesn't change the definition of consciousness for those entities.

If something has no self interest, it is not conscious.

So a human soldier that throws itself on a hand grenade to protect his comrades is not conscious?

I think you would find a lot of people who would disagree with you on that.

An aircraft's working environment, at least compared to cars with their windows of response time to collisions in response to multiple hazards, is many times less complex.

Are you a pilot?

The problem arises when you try to engineer a protocol for a trolley problem response in ai and you (the programmer) read the data wrong. So you have a driverless vehicle taking evasive action in a scenario where a trolley problem response wasn't warranted (like say, swerving to avoid a piece of cardboard and killing a pedestrian in the process)

That's not a trolley problem, that's a bug in a sensor system. And THAT is what people will be working on solving.

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

We might not be able to build a mountain, with its complex arrangement of complex crystal structures, from scratch yet. We might not ever be able to. But that doesn't mean there is some magical effect that we can't duplicate. Same with cells.

I agree. I never meant to imply there was a magical barrier that we will never be able to cross.

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

This proves there is or there is not no distinction between synthesizing life and the chemicals life utilizes?

It proves that there is no difference between "natural" and "synthetic" genomes/proteins/enzymes etc.

That's right. Scientists have been introducing/inserting synthetic macromolecules (DNA, RNA, proteins/enzymes etc.) into cells and model organisms for a long time. I do it almost every week. The cells recognize and utilize the synthetic versions of these molecules in the same way they do for their own endogenous analogues.

 

[birch]

but i wonder if there is a difference between plantlife where some plants are more conscious than others. for instance, if trees are more conscious than mushroom or grass etc.