When we're talking of Libets' experiments, we're talking really short term. The timing of flexing of a finger, when it has already been decided to make this movement. The sort of thing that's often done on auto pilot. The mainstream expanded this into a general determinism, but I've never felt this is warranted. The sort of thing you mention such as satisfying hunger from the fridge looks more like a conscious evaluation of the reward value of the food in the fridge linked to a 3D picture of the fridge and its food. I think the most people would agree that the processing that changes the 2D into a 3D image is unconscious. The hard problem is why it is like something to have our experience of the 3D image, our evaluation of the image (anticipated good taste of food etc) and the eventual reward value of actually eating it.

>>>> The question really is where you go from there. There's a weight of evidence to suggest that the 3D visual picture is not directly tied to the short-term ability to perform actions. <<<< Wow! That is so wildly incongruous with my own subjective experience. I see a 3-D world around me, parts of which call to me to satisfy my hunger or curiosity or call to duty, any of which can lead to short-term actions like getting myself a snack from the fridge, or paying a bill, or whatever. The 3D visual picture is not directly tied to the short-term ability to perform actions??? I just don't know where to begin to process that! Where do you go from there? Now for that I have an answer. The next step is to figure out how a 2-D retinal image is expanded into a full 3-D volumetric picture in your mind. I have several proposals in that direction: The Computational Mechanism of Visual Perception http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/bubw3/bubw3.html#compmech The Constructive Aspect of Visual Perception http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/ConstructiveAspect/ConstructiveAspect.html

I should make it clear that I fully agree with you that the 3D picture in the head is just a brain state, and that the external world is nothing like that. I think that's something that we can say we know from physics. In fact, some physicists are arguing for a 2D holographic world, which would make the brain states even more remote. Nothing I am saying here proceeds from so-called naive realism, although much of modern consciousness philosophy and psychology often looks to be at least unconsciously rooted in naive realism. The question really is where you go from there. There's a weight of evidence to suggest that the 3D visual picture is not directly tied to the short-term ability to perform actions. The Libet experiments showed that the readiness potentials for trivial actions arose before awareness of the conscious will to act, and the orthodoxy immediately seized on this a a proof of the non-existence of freewill of any kind. Most seem happy with that, but you mention planning and this looks to be where utilisation of visual perception, memory, thought and planning in the dorsolateral prefrontal come in, when dealing with longer term decisions on action. The Libet subjects and others in similar experiments were told to flexing their fingers or similar, but just given a choice of when to do it. So in effect the planning had been done in the experimenters consciousness. Libet himself was not fully in agreement with the interpretation put on his experiments. He proposed the idea of a 'free won't', where the conscious mind can intervene to halt an undesirable action that is getting underway in the brain. Recently something like this has been discovered in the basal ganglia, which can interrupt actions in preparation. It's not really clear whether this is conscious or unconscious. The basal ganglia are subcortical, but are a sort of mixer tap upstream of action and behaviour, and have feed back to almost everything including the 3D picture in the visual temporal cortex, the dorsolateral (planning) and the orbitofrontal (reward evaluation). Junius

Junius >>>> To come back to robots and the robot sensing the wall, I take it that you mean that it's like something for the robot to sense the wall. <<<< Junius No, not at all. I mean that when we see the walls of the room around us, we see all the walls in our visual field simultaneously and in parallel, as a three-dimensional structure, just like a museum diorama, or a theatre set. This structure was constructed in your brain based on sensory evidence. The "what it is like" is a three-dimensional explicit extended spatial structure. Thats what *my* visual experience is like. If an android is to have visual experience as we do, it must construct such a 3-D structure in its own mind. Now whether it uses the same color qualia as humans do is irrelevant, just as you can make a diorama out of wood or cardboard or plastic, or virtual structures made of patterns of electrons in a computer. Different creatures can use different media to express that spatial structure, but you have to build the structure in your awareness if you are to see the way humans do. Junius >>>> The weight of evidence nowadays seems to point to motion being mainly non-conscious. Visual processing is known to comprise a ventral stream from primary visual to temporal cortex and a dorsal stream also from primary but to the parietal. <<<< Junius Wow! Motion is mainly non-conscious? If electrophysiology "proves" that my motion is mainly non-conscious, then there is something seriously wrong with the interpretation of that evidence, because I for one know that *MY* motion is voluntary and under conscious control. And my conscious experience of planning a motor act, appears to me as a spatial field of attraction that seems to draw my (perceived) body in a specific direction in phenomenal space, and it is my conscious voluntary choice to either resist, or succumb to the desire to move in a particular direction, as explained in this portion of the Cartoon Epistemology... http://sharp.bu.edu/~slehar/cartoonepist/cartoonepist51L.html The point is that many people overlook the vividly spatial aspect of both perception and motor planning, confused by the naive realist illusion that that structure is the world itself. Once you acknowledge the indisputable fact that everything we perceive is a picture in our head, then the vividly spatial nature of perception becomes obvious to everyone.

Not wanting to go on too much, but I should have said something about the question of Persephone navigating into the bathroom. The weight of evidence nowadays seems to point to motion being mainly non-conscious. Visual processing is known to comprise a ventral stream from primary visual to temporal cortex and a dorsal stream also from primary but to the parietal. Studies of patients with brain damage show that those with damage to the dorsal stream can consciously perceive objects but struggle to perform simple motions such as putting a letter in a post box. On the other those with sufficiently serious damage to ventral are blind for purposes of conscious perception, but can perform this type of action, at least better than chance. These findings relate to the blindsight data where stroke or other damage has destroyed a part but not all of the conscious field. Patients again perform better than chance in identifying objects in the blind part of the field. It should be noted that the patients often have to be cajoled into taking the tests, because they regard it as so obvious that they can't see the objects. Quite a lot has also been said recently about the speed of reaction in professional sports. Libet showed that there's a 500 ms lag between stimuli and the stimuli coming into consciousness, which is too long if you want to respond to a serve in grand slam tennis. Further to this recent scanning seems to suggest that a lot of the motor cortex is involved in consciousness, presumably in terms of the global gamma synchrony.

The key word here seems to be 'logically' or the assumption that consciousness is only or mainly related to reasoning. When we or Persephone choose something we experience in turn separate subjective scenarios. The experience of one wine as against another, or what's probably more important the decision between a short-term benefit and a larger longer-term benefit, say between spending the afternoon drinking, or doing some exercise, which may at a later date give us a healthier body. This is our impression of it, and as of the last few years this is supported by experimentation. It is true as you say that the decision is arbitrary. You can write down pros and cons as much as you like, but the clincher is the subjective scenarios. What we should be asking is where that comes from. As you know, you wouldn't be the first to notice that the quantum world can also be a bit arbitrary. I wouldn't for a moment deny that we are conscious of reasoning, but the evidence suggests that it's coloured by emotional processing which lies predominantly up stream of reasoning. Thus reward/punisher valuations are thought to register first in the orbitofrontal and after that in the dorsolateral prefrontal. A mass of medical evidence going all the way back to Phineas Gage shows that damage to the orbitofrontal makes it extremely difficult for patients to make any decision or have acceptable behaviour, although in conversation they are fully cognisant of what they need to do. There is another joker in the pack, upstream of the dorsolateral, and that's the amygdala, that relic of our reptile past. The best example here is phobia where the signal by-passes the cortex, to get quickly to the amygdal, and then that's a place you really don't want to go. If you're phobic of snakes say, no amount of reasoning about it not being a non-poisonous variety is going to have any effect. To come back to robots and the robot sensing the wall, I take it that you mean that it's like something for the robot to sense the wall. I can't disprove that, but is there any evidence for it. When an infra red bea, or whatever bounces of a wall, 1s and 0s and sikicon switches make its limbs or wheels move away from it. That looks to be fully described by classical (I mean macroscopic/non-quantum physics), so why do we need to inject consciousness. Kelvin pointed out more than a century that this type of physics was complete. The extensions to physics came in other kinds. Really, I think the problem is more serious than this, because I'm not sure that this qualifies as a scientific theory. Can you suggest any experiement that would falsify the idea of this robot being conscious? I don't think things like the squirming of the alimentary canal are enough because here too classical description which contain no mention of consciousness gives a full explanation. On the other hand what I've said about the orbitofrontal etc could be falsified in a laboratory at any moment, and certainly its very likley to be amended or added to in coming years. What I said about consciousness and rocks was somewhat self indulgent. The orbitofrontal speaking if you like. I'd quite like conscious experience to extend down into the inanimate world, but I don't see hard evidence, and if there is evidence is likely to involve the quanta and spacetime, and that's a hard place, and always subject to what might come out of the Hadron Collider, I think it's easier to get there from the brain than the rocks. As a last word, perhaps we should think where we're likeley to go if the rocks are conscious. A century ago Freud warned Jung to hold fast to Freudian theory because it was a sluice gate against the dark tide of the occult. How does the theory constrain this world? What comprises a conscious entity in this world? Is it a continuum or is a large rock a single conscious entity, and if that a (sacred) mountain, or the river Nile or Father Tiber, and beyond that the planets, not to speak of the primal manifesting as ghosts and spirits. I don't rule these things but if we go on like this I can see us, or a lot of people worshipping Artemis, the Earth upholder, who sits in the market place on the throne called fame.

I would like to say some words, regarding the last messages. 1) I believe this is something most people here (if not all) is aware of, but I guess we should be more specific to what "side" of the counscious experience we are talking about. Meaning we have both fenomenalogical and psychological counsciousness - the latter is pretty much explained nowadays, our main concern is about the former. 2) I'm not sure I believe, but I can accept the pan psychism view - even if that implies infinite conscious beings (even sharing the same body, like conscious bones inside me). 3) What I cannot accept that we should even consider the hypothesis of fenomenalogical counsciousness being "existent but irrelevant" - simply because we (at least, not sure about my bones) are psychologically aware of it. Fenomenalogically, we "feel" the psychological processes which result from our brain; but every time we think about that kind of experience, this is our brain generating thougths about the fenomenalogical experience. In other words, the "spirit" is aware of the "mind"; but the opposite, somehow, is also true. 4) All this, of course, may be an illusion, and maybe there is no such thing as fenomenalogical experience at all. Still, I insist there is no option for a middle ground: OR fenomenalogical experience exists, and it is also psychologically relevant; OR fenomenalogical experience does NOT exist (and we are all losing our precious time reading this kind of discussion...). Finally, I would like to appologize for my English. There is much more I want to say, but I don't find the words. This is a hard topic, even more when spoken in a foreign language... :-( Thanks, Rogerio.

Junius >>>> However, I would see this as different from saying that unconscious processes as a whole are actually conscious. The argument seem to depend on drawing peoples' attention to something like driving and then they are aware of it, but you can't do the same for say processing in the primary visual cortex. <<<< Junius You are willing to accord a primal consciousness to rocks. What about to the bones in our body? Do they not feel the stress and strain? Or the blood in our veins? Does it not gush and flow in response to felt forces? But none of this becomes part of our narrative consciousness, it is a separate and independent thing that we experience only indirectly, if at all. What about your alimentary canal? You sure are conscious of events in the front end, as you chew and swallow your food, but the consciousness blinks out abruptly at the threshold of your throat, beyond which unconsciousness seems to reign. But does your gut not squirm and suffer when you feed it a hot Vindaloo curry? And do you not begin to feel the pain again at the other end of the canal? Surely the rest of your alimentary canal is conscious of its own squeezing and squirming in response to food, even if that experience occurs beyond your own. Either consciousness is an elusive etherial entity that has no functional purpose, or it is part and parcel of how matter interacts with matter, and occurs in everything. Whenever it occurs in such a way that WE don't experience it directly, we tend to deny its existence altogether. But it is *at least* equally likely that unconscious processes are only unconscious to us, but not to THEM, because otherwise they would not squeeze and squirm or gush and flow as we observe them to do. The example of the android choosing to sip wine in the tub, is absurd! What -- a decision has to be arbitrary and logically baseless for it to be conscious? A much more direct evidence of consciousness is if the android made it to the bathroom without bumping into walls or falling down stairs, which indicates that it must have had a vivid conscious experience of walls and doors and faucets to be able to navigate them so efficiently. The android can demonstrate visual consciousness by saying "I see a room around me", and when prompted it can elaborate "This wall stretches this way, meeting that wall in a corner there..." If THATS not conscious experience then I don't know what is!

Junius >>>> However, I would see this as different from saying that unconscious processes as a whole are actually conscious. The argument seem to depend on drawing peoples' attention to something like driving and then they are aware of it, but you can't do the same for say processing in the primary visual cortex. <<<< Junius You are willing to accord a primal consciousness to rocks. What about to the bones in our body? Do they not feel the stress and strain? Or the blood in our veins? Does it not gush and flow in response to felt forces? But none of this becomes part of our narrative consciousness, it is a separate and independent thing that we experience only indirectly, if at all. What about your alimentary canal? You sure are conscious of events in the front end, as you chew and swallow your food, but the consciousness blinks out abruptly at the threshold of your throat, beyond which unconsciousness seems to reign. But does your gut not squirm and suffer when you feed it a hot Vindaloo curry? And do you not begin to feel the pain again at the other end of the canal? Surely the rest of your alimentary canal is conscious of its own squeezing and squirming in response to food, even if that experience occurs beyond your own. Either consciousness is an elusive etherial entity that has no functional purpose, or it is part and parcel of how matter interacts with matter, and occurs in everything. Whenever it occurs in such a way that WE don't experience it directly, we tend to deny its existence altogether. But it is *at least* equally likely that unconscious processes are only unconscious to us, but not to THEM, because otherwise they would not squeeze and squirm or gush and flow as we observe them to do. The example of the android choosing to sip wine in the tub, is absurd! What -- a decision has to be arbitrary and logically baseless for it to be conscious? A much more direct evidence of consciousness is if the android made it to the bathroom without bumping into walls or falling down stairs, which indicates that it must have had a vivid conscious experience of walls and doors and faucets to be able to navigate them so efficiently. The android can demonstrate visual consciousness by saying "I see a room around me", and when prompted it can elaborate "This wall stretches this way, meeting that wall in a corner there..." If THATS not conscious experience then I don't know what is!

Junius >>>> However, I would see this as different from saying that unconscious processes as a whole are actually conscious. The argument seem to depend on drawing peoples' attention to something like driving and then they are aware of it, but you can't do the same for say processing in the primary visual cortex. <<<< Junius You are willing to accord a primal consciousness to rocks. What about to the bones in our body? Do they not feel the stress and strain? Or the blood in our veins? Does it not gush and flow in response to felt forces? But none of this becomes part of our narrative consciousness, it is a separate and independent thing that we experience only indirectly, if at all. What about your alimentary canal? You sure are conscious of events in the front end, as you chew and swallow your food, but the consciousness blinks out abruptly at the threshold of your throat, beyond which unconsciousness seems to reign. But does your gut not squirm and suffer when you feed it a hot Vindaloo curry? And do you not begin to feel the pain again at the other end of the canal? Surely the rest of your alimentary canal is conscious of its own squeezing and squirming in response to food, even if that experience occurs beyond your own. Either consciousness is an elusive etherial entity that has no functional purpose, or it is part and parcel of how matter interacts with matter, and occurs in everything. Whenever it occurs in such a way that WE don't experience it directly, we tend to deny its existence altogether. But it is *at least* equally likely that unconscious processes are only unconscious to us, but not to THEM, because otherwise they would not squeeze and squirm or gush and flow as we observe them to do. The example of the android choosing to sip wine in the tub, is absurd! What -- a decision has to be arbitrary and logically baseless for it to be conscious? A much more direct evidence of consciousness is if the android made it to the bathroom without bumping into walls or falling down stairs, which indicates that it must have had a vivid conscious experience of walls and doors and faucets to be able to navigate them so efficiently. The android can demonstrate visual consciousness by saying "I see a room around me", and when prompted it can elaborate "This wall stretches this way, meeting that wall in a corner there..." If THATS not conscious experience then I don't know what is!