The last sentence sums it up: “if you simply rule in advance that the mind must be physical and assume that an understanding of consciousness must be a materialist understanding, because scientific materialism is obviously correct, you end up looking for your keys under the streetlamp because that’s where the light is.“
The unending quest to explain consciousness
121–130 of 255 posts
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#122Author claims to "have been reading around in the field of consciousness studies for over two decades" + doesn't mention neither Giulio Tononi nor Karl Friston => comes of as kind of clueless ?
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#123The closest we will ever come to describing consciousness is simply describing the correlates of consciousness. The "ultimate cause" of it will forever be a mystery, behind the veil. Consciousness appears to exist outside of the physical world, in that we can describe a physical process entirely without invoking consciousness. Because of this, consciousness is beyond the scientific method and our fundamental understa…
See, this seems entirely obvious to me but so many people are stuck with a 100% materialism worldview that they expect their to be some scientific "explanation" for consciousness. And that truly baffles me.
A materialistic approach to explaining consciousness is necessary, since consciousness can be affected by physical changes to the brain, which implies that consciousness is fundamentally a physical process.
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why can't they point to "interactions of neurons"?
You can point to a protein being expressed by DNA, and then understand how many protein molecules amount to cells, then tissues, then organs. There is a first principle guiding you all the way, even though the complexity is staggering. There is no such first principle with interactions of neurons, in the sense that we know of no quality or property of a neuron that could amount to the phenomena "consciousness", in th…
Consciousness is a computation, and neurons are certainly capable of elementary computation.
So the building block has been pointed at (neurons), and its property given (computation). Is the problem that you don't believe that consciousness can emerge from elementary computation, or you believe that it is possible but we have no proof of it?
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#125My pet theory is there is nothing to explain. It is emergent. Over the next couple of decades, hardware performance improvements and specializations plus algorithmic breakthroughs will make AI start to crawl up the chain from useful pattern matching from messy data to useful dullard able to reason. And we still won't know why because the "insight" is buried in the network state and our little human brains cannot deal…
That's similar to my pet theory, except I don't think it will emerge "naturally" from current AI architectures. I think it is an emergent property from various interconnected, competing networks. For consciousness to emerge, it would require a feedback architecture where multiple RNNs not only operate on the same inputs, but on each other's outputs as well. At least that's my thinking. It's not my area at all.
Not only that, but because our brains are "plastic" those inputs and outputs need to be able to re-wire themselves and building hardware that can do that is tough.
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#126The closest we will ever come to describing consciousness is simply describing the correlates of consciousness. The "ultimate cause" of it will forever be a mystery, behind the veil. Consciousness appears to exist outside of the physical world, in that we can describe a physical process entirely without invoking consciousness. Because of this, consciousness is beyond the scientific method and our fundamental understa…
>Consciousness appears to exist outside of the physical world, in that we can describe a physical process entirely without invoking consciousness.
Only in the same ways that e.g. emotions exist 'outside of the physical world' and we are doing some work with those (e.g. we know more about the effects of hormones on them now).
I completely disagree that this is unstudiable or 'behind the veil'. We can create beings with consciousness (babies) using a purely physical process, of course there is some way to learn more.
Personally, I assume the main problem is (as it so often happens) that 'consciousness' is too loosely defined and explaining it will be easier with more strict definitions and a deeper understanding of the brain and body.
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#127The closest we will ever come to describing consciousness is simply describing the correlates of consciousness. The "ultimate cause" of it will forever be a mystery, behind the veil. Consciousness appears to exist outside of the physical world, in that we can describe a physical process entirely without invoking consciousness. Because of this, consciousness is beyond the scientific method and our fundamental understa…
>Consciousness appears to exist outside of the physical world, in that we can describe a physical process entirely without invoking consciousness. Only in the same ways that e.g. emotions exist 'outside of the physical world' and we are doing some work with those (e.g. we know more about the effects of hormones on them now). I completely disagree that this is unstudiable or 'behind the veil'. We can create beings wit…
So what is qualia, or the experience of conscious beings?
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#128The last sentence sums it up: “if you simply rule in advance that the mind must be physical and assume that an understanding of consciousness must be a materialist understanding, because scientific materialism is obviously correct, you end up looking for your keys under the streetlamp because that’s where the light is.“
We have good reasons to believe that everything is under the streetlamp, and little reason to think that there is something immaterial or irreducible.
This is a totally different debate though - 'Is materialism/phyiscalism/reductionism etc. correct?'.
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Consciousness appears to exist outside of the physical world, in that we can describe a physical process entirely without invoking consciousness. Only in the same ways that e.g. emotions exist 'outside of the physical world' and we are doing some work with those (e.g. we know more about the effects of hormones on them now). I completely disagree that this is unstudiable or 'behind the veil'. We can create beings wit…
So what is qualia, or the experience of conscious beings?
I'm not saying we have an answer today, just that an answer is reachable.
I can give you my currently favourite theories of course, but they are beside the point.
Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
See, this seems entirely obvious to me but so many people are stuck with a 100% materialism worldview that they expect their to be some scientific "explanation" for consciousness. And that truly baffles me.
A materialistic approach to explaining consciousness is necessary, since consciousness can be affected by physical changes to the brain, which implies that consciousness is fundamentally a physical process.
I'm of two minds about this (ha). One nods and says "yup, 'nuff said". The other thinks about a radio. A sufficiently complex radio can do amazing things... provided it has a signal. It can make music sounds boring and flat, or it can bring it to life (via an equalizer function). But if you mess with the antenna in any way, or, for that matter, disconnect it fully, the entire experience can be altered in significant ways. So, yeah, part of the physical matter was changed. But the original signal, already produced by some other process, "somewhere else", was never changed. I'm not necessarily advocating that our consciousness is generated somewhere else. It just makes me wonder (ha).