51–60 of 280 posts
Could a conversation about consciousness occur from unconscious things?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember one day as a teenager, sitting in class bored at high school, I was suddenly struck by the question–"why am I I, and not somebody else?" It felt so profound, so immense. But yes, if materialism is true, probably the question is empty. However, if some other philosophy of mind is true (there are many other options beyond just materialism and Cartesian dualism), maybe it means something. And, if one has this…
> there are many other options beyond just materialism and Cartesian dualism Can you give some examples of the kind of options you're thinking of? I mean, I have a lot of time for functionalist accounts, and given Sufficiently Smart Technology (tm) I'm happy to allow for the possibility of something recognizably "me" being artificially duplicated in a different physical substrate. (After which we'd rapidly start dive…
Up front let me admit this is effectively a cheat.
BUT in a multiverse or infinite universe not only are there multiple “you’s“ there are in fact infinite identical versions of you. I grant that this is not taking the spirit of the conversation into account, and is untestable to boot, it is genuinely possible.
I recall as a child once that I literally thought the following: > I can accept that the universe can give rise to agents with RI or AI. I can even accept that as a consequence of this, some of these agents may have self awareness. I am such an agent. Yet, I struggle comming to terms with the fact that "I" am aware of myself. I wish I could live long enough to find out how.
Yeah. I think a lot of people have that issue. I have read about and understood a lot of physicalist theories of consciousness, but I have yet to see one that explains my subjective bubble of experience. I could see how this is all an illusion, but I can't see why I can perceive it then, why I have these vivid subjective experiences. Conciousness is really quite odd, especially because I realized that most of the imp…
I can only know for sure that I am conscious, I only assume others are conscious because they are built kind of similar to the way I am. Though if we weren't conscious then would we talk about consciousness? What other topics wouldn't we talk about if we weren't conscious? We could still talk about experience because it would be functional, e.g. "I am experiencing pain" could be something I expect to come from an unc…
So, what is consciousness? Life? How does the world works? Why didn't life come with an instruction manual? What is there to do? And why do I have so many questions that no one already solved?
Not quite all the matter, but self replicating agents under the right circumstances (evolution) can be. Consciousness is fundamentally a function that preserves the agent in its environment. It's a combination of two optimisation processes - massive random search for its architecture, and learning. It's only purpose is to exist, thus it has to protect the needs of its body and make more of itself. If it doesn't take…
Not a good explanation. Why would a physically instantiated function feel like anything at all, rather than just a bunch of matter moving around? The question is about why the feelings themselves exist. "Functions" do not ever describe the feeling of the smell of chocolate or falling in love. That is the mystery. You have not remotely touched it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember one day as a teenager, sitting in class bored at high school, I was suddenly struck by the question–"why am I I, and not somebody else?" It felt so profound, so immense. But yes, if materialism is true, probably the question is empty. However, if some other philosophy of mind is true (there are many other options beyond just materialism and Cartesian dualism), maybe it means something. And, if one has this…
> there are many other options beyond just materialism and Cartesian dualism Can you give some examples of the kind of options you're thinking of? I mean, I have a lot of time for functionalist accounts, and given Sufficiently Smart Technology (tm) I'm happy to allow for the possibility of something recognizably "me" being artificially duplicated in a different physical substrate. (After which we'd rapidly start dive…
I'm not sure how easy it is even with idealism to make "Why am I I?" a meaningful question. But, if our choice is between viewing that question as a pointer to some profound mystery on the one hand, or viewing it as simply a case of muddle-headed confusion on the other, the allegiance of my heart is with the first choice rather than the second.
Jürgen Schmidthuber (an AI researcher for those not familiar with the name) gave an interesting explanation what conciousness is in an AMA that he conducted in 2015 on Reddit. I just submitted that in an extra thread [0] because it seems worth discussing. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19241278
This is interesting, very interesting take, but it still doesn't explain where _other_ people's consciousness comes from. Through reductive reasoning, it doesn't explain why calculators and any matter shouldn't have consciousness.