Blog on theories of Consciousness

There are a great many contemporary and traditional ideas afloat on the origin and nature of human( and animal) consciousness. I argue here that there are 3 major camps that can be discerned from the web.

1. The physicalist, or mechanistic reductionist view. This is the idea that C evolved naturally from natural selection. There is nothing involved but the actions of matter and energy. While most in this camp acknowledge that it is a big puzzle exactly how and why it evolved, the assumption is that not only will it eventually be explained on purely physical grounds, but that AGI workers will at some point in the future create robotic platforms that will posses C, perhaps even far exceeding that of biological humans.

2. A second view is that C is not generated by the brain itself, but rather the brain is a sort of antenna that picks up, or couples to, a pervading C field. This is a good analogy to a computer picking up WiFi. On this picture, it seems unlikely that AGI systems will ever acquire C. Here it would be argued that the physical world is real and deterministic, but that some kind of pervasive C field is an additional component of reality that is not part of the mechanistic universe.

3.  The third view is a modern version of the Berkeley idealism (?Bisop Berkeley, 18th c. Who claimed The World is my idea". In this model, the physical U does not even necessarily exist, and that all of us conscious animals have constructed it in our brains.

Prospero:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Bishop Berkley:

Berkeley: a Treatise concerning the Principles of Human knowledge 

It is an opinion strangely prevailing among men, that house, rivers, mountains, and in a word all sensible objects, have existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But, with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question,may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For, what are the fore mentioned objects but the things we perceive by sense. And what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? And is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived?