Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 216 posts

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

#181

Post by [deleted] »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #179
meric wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 univer…

> religion is about shattering the idea that one is separate from the rest of reality. Wait. My main issue with religion is that it forces the belief that one is separate from source/God/universe and creates a life long relationship of separation thus perverting humanity's relationship with ourselves and with our own "sacredness" or "divinity" in order to become a middleman to and sell something that was never separa…

[deleted]

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

#182

Post by Jarwain »

whybroke wrote: post #115
robotresearcher wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a major problem with the difference between your own and other consciousness. Let's say you are American, and had never travelled abroad. You've only heard tales of France and Japan from others. Do you suspect that other countries have a fundamentally different nature to your own? >So you have the question of why I can only directly perceive that emergent property in exactly one brain and not others You a…

Consider the story from your own personal point of view not as an observer. I put you in a duplication chamber. In front of you is a card with the letter "A" In a neighboring identical empty chamber is card with a "B" on it. You close your eyes and I pull a big steam-punk lever and an exact copy of you is made in chamber B When you open your eyes, what letter do you see and why?

I would see A. The cloned me in chamber B would be brought into existence at that moment. They would share all the memories as me, and believe to be the one in chamber A. May be slightly confused about why the letter changed, unless you prepared yourself beforehand.

But the original observer that was put into the duplication chamber, would maintain their letter A

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

#183

Post by bitJericho »

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…

That sounds great but it ignores a possible and compelling explanation. We are aware because nature selected for awareness. Why? Perhaps because of free will being a powerful tool for survival.

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

#184

Post by sridca »

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…

> Now, if that awareness created or creates the physical world (as the Bhagavad Gita seems to state) that would be pretty amazing and I'd love to read about it.

I am not surprised that the top comment in HN, in 2016, is that of pro-solipsism ... given its recent proclivity towards all things spiritual over rational.

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

#185

Post by acqq »

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 :…

Around a month ago I wrote about the causes of that denial:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335022

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

#186

Post by whybroke »

Jarwain wrote: post #182
whybroke wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the story from your own personal point of view not as an observer. I put you in a duplication chamber. In front of you is a card with the letter "A" In a neighboring identical empty chamber is card with a "B" on it. You close your eyes and I pull a big steam-punk lever and an exact copy of you is made in chamber B When you open your eyes, what letter do you see and why?

I would see A. The cloned me in chamber B would be brought into existence at that moment. They would share all the memories as me, and believe to be the one in chamber A. May be slightly confused about why the letter changed, unless you prepared yourself beforehand. But the original observer that was put into the duplication chamber, would maintain their letter A

If consciousness is purely a result of the arrangement of the brain, why would you not see B and the copy see A since the bodies are identical? This paradox is the problem with a simple emergent property explanation.

To say somehow the different history of the atoms in the original brain vs the atoms in duplicate is somehow relevant to the emergent property would be a very odd claim: we don't take into account the prior history of the atoms in turbulent flow for example, just what the are doing right now.

Or for clarity, if I gradually replaced every molecule in your brain with another identical one, the emergent "you" would not be affected. So, if it weren't already obvious, it clearly can not be dependent on the particular atoms that make you up.

And by the way, if your brain at 10 years old and 90 years old, in spite of being very different structurally, still give rise to your same "you", the copy would not even have to be very good.

It is a fun problem I must say.

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

#187

Post by coldtea »

azakai wrote: post #130
coldtea wrote: post #96

> The reply is simple. We know what conscious experience is because the having is the knowing: Having conscious experience is knowing what it is. That's sidestepping the issue. Of course we know what consciousness is in this sense. What we don't know, and what we actually mean when we say we don't know what consciousness is, is what causes it and how it emerges.

You ask what causes consciousness and how it emerges, which presupposes something before consciousness - something that can cause it and it can emerge from. Most likely you intend the physical world. Why is consciousness in need of being explained in that manner, is what I think the author would ask. It's similar to saying that physical matter or energy are hard problems, as we don't know what causes them or how they…

>You ask what causes consciousness and how it emerges, which presupposes something before consciousness - something that can cause it and it can emerge from.

And why not? Most (all?) including rocks, have a cause and constituent elements that need to be arranged in a certain way for them to have a particular function.

The strange thing would be to presuppose consciousness as without something before it. Which would be like what Christians for example consider for the "soul".

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

#188

Post by coldtea »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #108
coldtea wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we want to better understand the various meanings of consciousness we need to analyse each one separately, rather than treating it as a single concept. This implies the naive premise that consciousness the thing is not a suitcase itself (and thus, that an umbrella world is unsuitable to name it). So, it basically presupposes the reductionism that it's supposed to prove.

The problem of a suitcase word is when different people are using different definitions to talk about the same concept. It is entirely reasonable to presuppose that that is nonsense. It has nothing to do with the complexity of the thing discussed. The problem is when there are disjoint definitions.

>The problem of a suitcase word is when different people are using different definitions to talk about the same concept. It is entirely reasonable to presuppose that that is nonsense.

Not really. People could be legitimately doing that, because the concept is inherently multi-faceted and each approaches it from a specific angle.

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

#189

Post by collyw »

narag wrote: post #80
collyw wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not denying it is tied to the physical, that seems fairly obvious, but it doesn't mean that it is a only physical phenomenon. A radio is not the same as the channel that it is playing and one is tied to the other.

Maybe you would sound more clear if you explained what else, different from "physical" there is that conciousness, or anything else for that matter, could be attributed to.

That would likely be a new discovery worth a bit more than an HN post. So far the physical world is doing a damn poor job of explaining consciousness.

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

#190

Post by Dylan16807 »

coldtea wrote: post #188
Dylan16807 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem of a suitcase word is when different people are using different definitions to talk about the same concept. It is entirely reasonable to presuppose that that is nonsense. It has nothing to do with the complexity of the thing discussed. The problem is when there are disjoint definitions.

> The problem of a suitcase word is when different people are using different definitions to talk about the same concept. It is entirely reasonable to presuppose that that is nonsense. Not really. People could be legitimately doing that, because the concept is inherently multi-faceted and each approaches it from a specific angle.

It's okay to approach things from different angles, and to use equivalent definitions even if they take wildly different shapes. But as my explanation continued, you cannot use disjoint definitions. If we are to talk about the concept of barnfulness, we won't have a productive discussion if one person defines it as 'red and square' and nothing more, while another person defines it as 'contains horses' and nothing more.

No concept inherently requires that definitions of it contradict. And highly-contradicting definitions is a critical factor in having a suitcase word.

Post reply on HN