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

Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 191 posts

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#71

Post by visarga »

mannykannot wrote: post #10
breckinloggins wrote: post #5

This equivocation between consciousness and meta-consciousness is so widespread that a plethora of books, which are seemingly dedicated to the project of "explaining consciousness", instead spend their entire contents explaining some hypothesis involving meta-consciousness and then proceed to declare victory without ever touching consciousness itself. Jaynes' "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bica…

> If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem. I am not convinced - I suspect that there isn't anything to the experience of being like a worm; that the very question presupposes self-awareness of some sort. I suspect the hard problem of consciousness might lie in the self-referentiality of self-aware consciousness (though alternatively or in addition, it might be on account of its workings b…

> I suspect that there isn't anything to the experience of being like a worm

Even a worm has goals to attain - food and reproduction. In order to attain those goals, it needs to have perceptions and to rank those by the estimated return value. That is what it's like to be a worm.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#72

Post by lomnakkus »

visarga wrote: post #71
mannykannot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem. I am not convinced - I suspect that there isn't anything to the experience of being like a worm; that the very question presupposes self-awareness of some sort. I suspect the hard problem of consciousness might lie in the self-referentiality of self-aware consciousness (though alternatively or in addition, it might be on account of its workings b…

> I suspect that there isn't anything to the experience of being like a worm Even a worm has goals to attain - food and reproduction. In order to attain those goals, it needs to have perceptions and to rank those by the estimated return value. That is what it's like to be a worm.

> That's like saying a dead worm and a live worm are not so different.

What? No.

> If there is a difference in how they evolve, there is a something to be like it because it has to have some kind of perception and action selection mechanism. What it's like to be a worm is the perception stream evaluated by the value function of the worm.

Assuming that by "evolve" you mean "evolve as a dynamical system", then yes.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#73

Post by creo »

Lets challenge this. What if baby can be born alive without having consciousness? It's not impossible since we can't detect consciousness. Maybe it occurs in some babies born with brain development problems, maybe not. Besides title says "Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think". Sounds clicky-baity and it assumes that reader is dumb.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#74

Post by lomnakkus »

mannykannot wrote: post #10
breckinloggins wrote: post #5

This equivocation between consciousness and meta-consciousness is so widespread that a plethora of books, which are seemingly dedicated to the project of "explaining consciousness", instead spend their entire contents explaining some hypothesis involving meta-consciousness and then proceed to declare victory without ever touching consciousness itself. Jaynes' "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bica…

> If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem. I am not convinced - I suspect that there isn't anything to the experience of being like a worm; that the very question presupposes self-awareness of some sort. I suspect the hard problem of consciousness might lie in the self-referentiality of self-aware consciousness (though alternatively or in addition, it might be on account of its workings b…

> I suspect that there isn't anything to the experience of being like a worm; that the very question presupposes self-awareness of some sort.

It also presupposes that you are a worm. It's a (logically) absurd and (practically) pointless question. How could anyone/anything possibly know what it's like to be a worm without actually having the experience of being one? Answer: They couldn't/can't.

The question also has no relevance to consciousness. We know what it's like to be conscious humans because we are conscious humans and we do have human experiences.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#75

Post by visarga »

justinpombrio wrote: post #7

I'm completely lost. What does it mean to be conscious of something, but unaware of it? I thought those were synonyms. The article asks this question: > Consider your breathing right now: the sensation of air flowing through your nostrils, the movements of your diaphragm, etcetera. Were you not experiencing these sensations a moment ago, before I directed your attention to them? Or were you just unaware that you were…

I'd define consciousness as "anything the brain processes", where the goal is adaptation of the organism to the environment. It's very much about goal driven behavior.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#76

Post by visarga »

lomnakkus wrote: post #72
visarga wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that there isn't anything to the experience of being like a worm Even a worm has goals to attain - food and reproduction. In order to attain those goals, it needs to have perceptions and to rank those by the estimated return value. That is what it's like to be a worm.

> That's like saying a dead worm and a live worm are not so different. What? No. > If there is a difference in how they evolve, there is a something to be like it because it has to have some kind of perception and action selection mechanism. What it's like to be a worm is the perception stream evaluated by the value function of the worm. Assuming that by "evolve" you mean "evolve as a dynamical system", then yes.

Yes, that's what I mean. I deliberated a lot about using "act" or "react" but it doesn't apply to inert objects as well.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#77

Post by visarga »

xelxebar wrote: post #15

This article, like most discussions on "consciousness" I encounter reads like little more than word games to me. We could similarly write articles about all the qualities and properties of phlogiston, and we'd have learned just as much. What thing are we actually trying to explain here? What is the extensive meaning of the word "consciousness"? How can I emperically determine if some object/animal/thing possesses con…

No, I think consciousness has the role of protecting the life of the organism and reproduction. It's not a "soul" thing, it's a "body" thing, or more exactly, it's a "world+agent+game" thing.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#78

Post by speedplane »

goatlover wrote: post #55
sriku wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem. I don't believe we can get to the root of this "hard problem" by first trying to agree on a definition of the word before we can say anything about it. We will also need to admit the possibility that the question "are we conscious?" may be as vacuous at the end as "is Pluto a planet?".

Pluto is a taxonomy problem. Consciousness is reconciling how we explain the world (science & objectivity) versus how we experience the world (subjectivity). Consider that the world looks colored, is full of sounds, smells, tastes and feels. But the scientific explanation leaves all that out. The scientific world is the ghostly world of equations, theories and data. It's Plato's cave inverted.

Consciousness is at it's heart irrational. Using reason or science to explain it won't work.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#79

Post by svara »

language wrote: post #29
mannykannot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I don't think there is an infinite recursion here, but I do think that consciousness, as we experience it, is several steps beyond merely responding to stimuli. It just crossed my mind that perhaps 'our ability to think about the issue is constrained by our language' and '[consciousness'] workings being inaccessible to introspection' are the same thing.

> .. that perhaps 'our ability to think about the issue is constrained by our language' and '[consciousness] workings being inaccessible to introspection' are the same thing. I like to think about it that way, but it makes the problem feel intractable. The problem is that we want to describe consciousness as "that thing that allows an organism to describe consciousness as 'that thing that allows an organism to descri…

Exactly. That's why we keep going in circles when talking about these things, and why people have been repeating themselves for hundreds of years, yet the problem still seems fresh.

I wish I had something more substantive to add, but I have really come to think of this as a fundamental limit to thinking.

It's sort of analogous to starting with a set of axioms, then trying to derive explanations for these axioms from them.

This sounds defeatist, but I have yet to read a good argument for why trying to explain the "hard problem" is anything else than that. I guess you could see this in a sort of mystical light and build something spiritual around it, too...

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#80

Post by dahauns »

hathawsh wrote: post #12

Expanding on the breathing example in the article, could we say there are at least three distinct systems in the brain that control breathing? They are: - Conscious breathing: I follow a chosen breathing pattern with no immediate awareness of the breathing process. - Meta-conscious breathing: I choose to be fully aware and in control of multiple aspects of breathing. I control my diaphragm and lips directly, I listen…

From my gut I'd say there are two - your "conscious breathing" is actually the same as your unconscious breathing process: Both are done without awareness to it and are primarily modulated via the vegetative system (O2 receptors in the carotid, hering-breuer reflex and so on).

The difference being that while you're awake you can consciously affect and correct your breathing (your "meta-conscious breathing"). When you're asleep, your body has to rely on it's other unconscious mechanisms to do that.

Post reply on HN