131–140 of 145 posts
I don’t know about you other beast machines, but I rarely ever think of the internal states of my body (trying to adjust beating heart, pupil adjustment, etc.). To think that consciousness is required for these rare moments of internal state reflection seems a stretch (considering most life doesn’t require it).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand how someone can not understand the problem. You and I have conscious experience, we have a meaningful sensation of qualia. A billet of 4140 steel does not, or so we assume. Both are governed by physical laws of the universe, so there must be some distinction beyond these physical laws that differentiate them. In this framing, there are typically four camps, three of them line up with your camps: 1)…
Well we do know emergent phenomena that occur as abstractions. Probably the most obvious example is a computer program. At a basic level, the computer really doesn't look like it's doing useful work, it just processes lists of rules and stuff, but actually the emergent behaviour is that I am browsing Hacker News. What is the difference between a computer and a rock? Well there isn't actually a fundamental difference,…
Would a computer form with enough time and without consciousness from random interactions and the precise laws of the universe?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand how someone can not understand the problem. You and I have conscious experience, we have a meaningful sensation of qualia. A billet of 4140 steel does not, or so we assume. Both are governed by physical laws of the universe, so there must be some distinction beyond these physical laws that differentiate them. In this framing, there are typically four camps, three of them line up with your camps: 1)…
Consider the weather. Weather exists, I think everyone can accept this. But what is weather? Is it simply an aggregate emergent property of many interacting atmospheric and geological systems? Or is it something more? How can emergent properties of even a complex system create self-organizing and self-perpetuating semi-stable phenomenon like tornadoes? What controls the weather? Consider consciousness. Everyone can a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, you have a handwave. A vague idea that when a system becomes "complex" enough it suddenly becomes conscious. There's no mechanism, no rigor, no cause and effect. With the browser you can chase down every bit through the hardware, down to the quantum tunneling effect dictating what's happening in the silicon and come up with a concrete explanation based in physical laws. With the browser example, at no level…
One obvious difference between computers and humans is that only one of them is an animal. So far as we can tell, consciousness only arises in animals. This sounds like a truism, but I wonder if using phrases like “complex system“ masks it: both humans and computers are complex systems, and only one of them is conscious, and therefore what could possibly be the difference? Well, the list of differences between the tw…
Doubtful since the medium of our thought is clear to us but impossible to share and difficult to describe.
Nothing in this essay addresses the single most prominent question of contemporary philosophy of mind, which is the hard problem of consciousness. It only addresses the soft problems, which everyone agrees are solvable "merely" with enough time, funding, and initiative. Nothing about the "beast machine" addresses how qualitative experience arises from physical phenomena, or as Chalmers puts it, "Why are we not philos…
So far the only answer I've seen people give to the question is "what problem? There's no problem". Basically, there are many people who don't (or also have convinced themselves that they don't) perceive an incongruity between their personal subjective experience and the idea that consciousness is just an emergent phenomena of a physical system. I haven't found a good way to explain it, I just know that there's somet…
I'm starting to think that the thing that feels "wrong" is just that it directly contradicts foundational elements of your current belief system. And it's perfectly natural to avoid updating a belief system that has and continues to serve you reasonably well, even if you know deep down that it's inaccurate. Because you also know that updating it will have a significant cost as the implications unfold.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the "religion solution" contains a lot of brute-force belief-writing and evidence-avoidance techniques.
Coming from someone who no longer feels the incongruity, and has paid for that update.
Nothing in this essay addresses the single most prominent question of contemporary philosophy of mind, which is the hard problem of consciousness. It only addresses the soft problems, which everyone agrees are solvable "merely" with enough time, funding, and initiative. Nothing about the "beast machine" addresses how qualitative experience arises from physical phenomena, or as Chalmers puts it, "Why are we not philos…
Look, if you jump, you will fall back down to the earth, and there is nothing you can do about it. Just the same as if you remove the eyes' nerves, you can no longer see, or if you have someone tap your knee is a certain spot, it will jerk.
We are nothing more than input, output machines, whether made from "meat", or other parts as in people with machines for pacemakers. Get over it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those same people might say that it is just the experience of "being the computer" rather than seeing it from afar. But I don't know, because personally it isn't an argument I find convincing. As an aside, I think you have to be a bit arrogant or closed minded to assert that they actually can see the problem. I really don't think my wife is lying or being nefarious when she says she doesn't see a problem. I trust her…
So if there's such a thing as "being the computer" could we say that a computer experiences qualia and it is somewhat conscious?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A vast majority of people who believe that consciousness is an emergent property would also say that a sufficiently advanced computer is exactly as conscious as you or I. At least when I believed that human consciousness was an emergent property I believed that an advanced robot would be totally conscious.
In the original Chinese Room thought experiment it’s a human inside performing all the calculations by hand. To be consistent you would also believe that this room with a human in it has its own consciousness as a whole, correct? This just seems too weird to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So far the only answer I've seen people give to the question is "what problem? There's no problem". Basically, there are many people who don't (or also have convinced themselves that they don't) perceive an incongruity between their personal subjective experience and the idea that consciousness is just an emergent phenomena of a physical system. I haven't found a good way to explain it, I just know that there's somet…
> I just know that there's something wrong or missing. We know with certainty - since you tell us - that you have that feeling. People have strong feelings about lot of things. People disagree about things of the most intense importance to them, such as the existence of god. I won't list any more examples to avoid arguing about them. But since people have mutually exclusive very strong intuitions/knowledge/feelings,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I take your point, but I disagree: your statement assumes that there are conscious beings who are not my kin (and to be clear, by "kin" I broadly mean animals: living entities that are embodied and show characteristics like intention, mood and emotion). But there isn't any evidence that these exist and there's little if any evidence that they are even possible. At best, you can put forward a thought experiment that s…
No, there's no such assumption in my statement. That statement is merely open about what we don't know. Conversely, there is an assumption in your reasoning that non-animals are never conscious, which is, well, an assumption, and not derived from facts. This creates a blind spot where an area of non-knowledge is assumed to be known about, and rejected out of hand. I have to point out that taking the view that conscio…
I’ve long been of the common-in-tech-circles belief that at some point in the future we will be able to create intelligent, conscious machines. Where my view on this fascinating issue is shifting is that I’m much less convinced that our animal nature is immaterial to this task.
In any case this has been a fascinating and insightful conversation and I appreciate the opportunity to have it with you and the other commenters here.