An interesting thing to me is the unending quest may somewhat end during our lifetimes through us being able to build conscious AI and see how it works.
The unending quest to explain consciousness
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Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#12The really hard problem of consciousness is giving a definition that allows me to tell whether a rock is more or less conscious than a person.
Not sure its hard to come up with a definition that does that. eg consciousness is awareness of stuff as in the internal state changing in a way that corresponds. So when humans see stuff you get neurons firing, with the rock less so. A problem is everyone has different definitions though.
How do you know that the rock is not aware of stuff? if you say consciousness is just neurons firing in certain patterns you have also given an answer to the traditional "hard" problem of consciousness, with hundreds of pages of philosophical thought that refutes your answer.
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#13The really hard problem of consciousness is giving a definition that allows me to tell whether a rock is more or less conscious than a person.
There are theories that equate information processing (integration/differentiation) with consciousness. It maps well with what happens in your brain, where too little or too much functional connectivity maps to loss of consciousness (think anesthesia and epilepsy).
Rocks also have complex internal structure that responds to external influence, e.g. atoms vibrating in their crystal lattices depending on heat and pressure. Maybe there is a Boltzmann consciousness inside the rock when you're picking it up. What is "information" and what is noise is a matter of interpretation.
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#14An interesting thing to me is the unending quest may somewhat end during our lifetimes through us being able to build conscious AI and see how it works.
I doubt it. We can't prove other humans are conscious, I don't see how AI will help clarify anything there.
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#15The really hard problem of consciousness is giving a definition that allows me to tell whether a rock is more or less conscious than a person.
Not sure its hard to come up with a definition that does that. eg consciousness is awareness of stuff as in the internal state changing in a way that corresponds. So when humans see stuff you get neurons firing, with the rock less so. A problem is everyone has different definitions though.
Right. And if the rock had some suitably complex structure, its internal state would be changing with awareness of stuff.
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#16"Unending" is right. We'll not solve this because the problem is beyond reason.
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#17Manzotti’s account (as described in the article) ignores dreams, or the fact that directly zapping the brain elicits experience (e.g. magnetic stimulation of the visual cortex triggers colorful flashes known as phosphenes).
Graziani’s approach is more interesting, as a theory of attention, but falls short on qualia, and focuses on peculiarities of the human brain, assuming that a cerebral cortex is necessary for generating a conscious experience.
My pet theory is that consciousness can be modeled as a mathematical dual of the physical world. Think Voronoi diagrams vs. Delaunay triangulation. They are distinct, imbued with their own properties, but inextricably linked in that you can generate one from the other.
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#18The really hard problem of consciousness is giving a definition that allows me to tell whether a rock is more or less conscious than a person.
I find it reasonable to assume that for thought processes to occur, there must be some processing, so rocks are out.
A more interesting example would be, say, trees, which do communicate with each other to some degree. Is that accompanied by some form of awareness? What's the lower bound of complexity at which consciousness kicks in? What about supraorganisms such as insect hives? Human cities? An ecosystem as a whole?
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure its hard to come up with a definition that does that. eg consciousness is awareness of stuff as in the internal state changing in a way that corresponds. So when humans see stuff you get neurons firing, with the rock less so. A problem is everyone has different definitions though.
How do you know that the rock is not aware of stuff? if you say consciousness is just neurons firing in certain patterns you have also given an answer to the traditional "hard" problem of consciousness, with hundreds of pages of philosophical thought that refutes your answer.
If you're not a dualist, thoughts necessarily have to be accompanied by some change of state of the material substrate.
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#20An interesting thing to me is the unending quest may somewhat end during our lifetimes through us being able to build conscious AI and see how it works.
This brings up Ned Block's paper on the Harder Problem of Consciousness in which he uses the example of Data from Star Trek to demonstrate the epistemic bind we are in when trying to decide whether anything non-human is conscious. Another example would be a society of people (China for example). Do all their interactions result in consciousness? How would we every determine this?