Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter • Hacker News Board

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#141

Post by truth_sentinell » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 12:53 AM UTC

paulsutter wrote: post #64

Consciousness is a suitcase word, which makes it challenging to debate. From [1]: "In The Emotion Machine, Marvin Minsky discusses suitcase words—words that contain a variety of meanings packed into them, such as conscience, emotions, consciousness, experience, thinking, morality, right, and wrong. "The word ‘consciousness’ is used to describe a wide range of activities, such as “how we reason and make decisions, how…

That's the most well-planned person I've ever seen. Thanks for the link, it'll definitely help me to put my stuff together.

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#142

Post by ilaksh » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 12:57 AM UTC

After reading all of the interesting comments and debates, I think that as far as having fun wasting time with amateur philosophy, consciousness can be quite a fun topic.

But beyond that I think I just want to echo what paulsutter said in his comment -- consciousness is a suitcase word with too many different meanings. To have a 'real' discussion you would need to unpack all of the different meanings at the beginning, but no one is going to do that.

Also, the word consciousness is directly tied into belief systems, so if you want to understand someone's belief system, you can ask them about it, but the nature of beliefs is that you are not going to have a constructive conversation.

If anyone is curious about my own beliefs, I think that we can generally answer the Leibniz machine question with 'emergence' so perhaps I am an emergentist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergentism

I like the general explanation of how something like consciousness arises from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#143

Post by meric » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 12:59 AM UTC

carapace wrote: post #88

This is terrible. Is is even an argument? I was reading "Hard problem of consciousness" Wikipedia article this morning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness I'm not sure this adds anything to that. The author seems to want to say that consciousness is primary and that the physical universe, matter, is consciousness somehow, so poof no more mystery. But this doesn't touch the "hard problem" so w…

One could flip it - There's no matter, only awareness. All awareness, when devoid of the body, the thoughts, emotions, memories, are identical.

Now, make that leap, where `identical == expressing an identity`, where it is all one universal awareness, and that is reality.

You now have a pass to:

Hindu (Brahman):

"Brahman (/brəhmən/; ब्रह्मन्) connotes the highest Universal Principle, the Ultimate Reality in the universe."[1]

Islam (Allah):

"He is Allah, the one and only. God, The Eternal, the Absolute. He begot not, nor was He begotten, and there is none comparable to. Him."

Reality created nothing, nor was reality created.[2]

Taoism (Tao)

"The unnamable is the eternally real... Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.... mystery and manifestations arise from the same source....." [3]

Mystery = presence & essence, manifestation = matter, stuff, things, objects.

Christianity (Holy Spirit)

If you must, think of Adam and Eve as the first two self-aware beings, and "fruit of the tree of knowledge" as using their special ability for the benefit of their own ego, at the expense of being one with the universe, like all other plants and "lesser" animals. A.k.a "The original sin". In Taoist terms, Adam and Eve stopped seeing the mystery, and full of desire, saw the manifestations, and that's when they were 'cast out of the garden'. One moment perfectly content, next moment cannot ever stop wanting 'more'.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Haqq

[3] http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.h...

Religion is about shattering the idea that one is separate from the rest of reality.

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#144

Post by breuleux » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 1:01 AM UTC

_1tem wrote: post #136

breuleux wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My high level knowledge of how atoms move provide sufficient assurance and understanding of how a Macbook Pro experience is created. I don't think it does per se . In a world where computers didn't exist you would probably not be able to say whether a MacBook Pro is a thing that could possibly exist or not just from fundamental knowledge of physics. If I gave you the most low-level possible description of physics,…

> Perhaps I'm wrong, but I do feel like I understand it: what defines or distinguishes, say, my qualia of red, is how it primes my brain into thinking about red things, how it changes my mood, how it behaves relative to every other concept, which makes it about as complex as my entire brain would be. Over here it seems like you're defining consciousness by its relation to other objects. In other words, you're reducin…

> I'm referring to something that is completely independent of its outputs. Is it not conceivable that a man who is missing both his arms and legs, mute, blind, and deaf, can still have a conscious ego?

The brain has many internal inputs and outputs, even more of them than external ones. Even if you imagine a completely isolated brain that can't see, hear or move, it's still exchanging signals internally. For instance, such a brain could fabricate a dream world, create (possibly nonsensical) images to feed to its visual cortex directly, and so on. Its conscious experience would be whatever it builds for itself, operating through these internal input and output channels, shaped by random noise and whatever memories it may have of real things. It's what dreaming is, basically. That is consistent with my view.

If, on the other hand, you ask me to imagine a mute, blind, deaf, paralyzed man who also has his brain cut up in such a way that it can't talk to itself, then no, I do not think that it is conceivable that the man has a conscious ego.

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#145

Post by ilaksh » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 1:07 AM UTC

sp527 wrote: post #120

I didn't realize until reading this comment section that there's an entire demographic of intelligent people in denial about why we are conscious (generic cognition is an evolutionary advantage in responding to circumstances that are too dynamic to be accounted for by a process measured in generations) and whether it persists beyond death (no, because it's hooked up to the brain). And by the way, it clearly worked :…

Its not about intelligence, its about beliefs. Beliefs do not indicate intelligence. For example, I have an identical twin brother who makes more money than me with a highly technical job and is quite religious, and I am an atheist. I have another brother who is a senior principal engineer who thinks Islam is an inherently violent religion and is enthusiastic about the middle east invasions, whereas myself I believe that to be propaganda going back to the Crusades.

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#146

Post by 7373737373 » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 1:16 AM UTC

davmre wrote: post #87

7373737373 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. In the follow-up linked above he also describes the authors' responses to this. The predictions are not de facto false. He argues that they are intuitively false, which is a matter of personal belief but not empirical research. The same goes for some counterarguments.

What predictions does IIT make that could be 'de facto' falsified in the sense you're imagining?

It will probably depend on how well large systems can be approximated.

In terms of reproducible results, it would be most interesting to research the shape of different qualia and how they progress if the underlying network changes (both in function and connectivity). Right now, we can only rely on self-aware and -reporting systems. But if we know how actual experiences integrate if two systems merge it might be possible to get a "feeling" for others.

Cases such as these[0] are therefore extremely interesting. If it is possible to gradually change the connectivity between two systems, according to the theory, there should be a sudden "split" into two experiences. High bandwidth brain-computer-brain interfaces could possibly provide such a possibility in the future.

[1] is another reason why I tend to be pretty agnostic about intuitive arguments.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniopagus_twins [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-b...

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#147

Post by meric » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 1:19 AM UTC

radarsat1 wrote: post #132

carapace wrote: post #88

This is terrible. Is is even an argument? I was reading "Hard problem of consciousness" Wikipedia article this morning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness I'm not sure this adds anything to that. The author seems to want to say that consciousness is primary and that the physical universe, matter, is consciousness somehow, so poof no more mystery. But this doesn't touch the "hard problem" so w…

> You have a body but you're not your body Not only that, but you're you because you're not someone else's body. That sounds tautological but I think it's important. I think a big part of what gives someone consciousness is identity, and what gives us identity, is the idea of us being an island isolotated within our body and therefore distinct from other conciousnesses. Which sounds pointless, but I think it's actual…

Perhaps consciousness is shared, only memory isn't, and the distinction is mere an illusion due to distinct memory. Perhaps that's how aiming to be "self-less" is a thing in Buddhism, Sufism, Zen, etc.

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#148

Post by CuriouslyC » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 1:22 AM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #138

themgt wrote: post #105

I feel like a lot of the replies here are missing what's actually a quite subtle, thoughtful argument: The German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz made the point vividly in 1714. Perception or consciousness, he wrote, is “inexplicable on mechanical principles, i.e. by shapes and movements. If we imagine a machine whose structure makes it think, sense, and be conscious, we can conceive of it being enlarged in suc…

This quantum biology stuff is just a way for dualists to hang on to their religious or mystic beliefs.

Not exactly. We've pushed determinism down to the level of quantum mechanics. Bell's theorem strongly implicates that the universe is fundamentally non-deterministic. The way I see it, you can interpret this non-determinism as randomness, or you can interpret it as choice. The thing I find ironic is that most scientists - who espouse parsimony and deduction based on observation - choose the random explanation. If quantum indeterminacy is random, it is the first truly random process we've ever discovered. Additionally, when a scientist states that their perception of choice is mistaken/an illusion, I have to ask, then how do you trust any of the data you base your science on?

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#149

Post by Biganon » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 1:23 AM UTC

sp527 wrote: post #120

I didn't realize until reading this comment section that there's an entire demographic of intelligent people in denial about why we are conscious (generic cognition is an evolutionary advantage in responding to circumstances that are too dynamic to be accounted for by a process measured in generations) and whether it persists beyond death (no, because it's hooked up to the brain). And by the way, it clearly worked :…

If we don't have free will, what advantages does the illusion of free will grant, evolutionary speaking?

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#150

Post by CuriouslyC » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 1:28 AM UTC

sp527 wrote: post #128

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are talking about behavior. Qualia is something else. Why does it exists?

Because evolution ultimately reduces entropy in response to stimuli. This process, combined with time, can yield complexity. Countless studies abound ascertaining rudimentary aspects of cognition in even fairly primitive organisms. It's hardly a trait upon which humans hold an exclusive claim - we just evolved the best version of it.

He's asking why we aren't just philosophical zombies. There's no reason that systems that display intelligence have to experience existence.