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What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

nautil.us

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Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#111

Post by guerrilla »

pessimizer wrote: post #108
guerrilla wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fun question is, what exactly is connected to those sensors and experiences them and where is the location of that thing? Again, your body. Think about it. Your body is experiencing what your brain has generated out of your sensory input. You don't need a homunculus, you are a body. You are your body and there's nothing else to you.

For me it's worse. I don't think theres any reason to identify my perspective with any homunculus. It's watching somebody play a game, not playing it. My question is this: I "know" there are a lot of games being played - why am I watching this one?

It's the one your body generated. Your body took all its data, generated your mind out of that and experiences your mind. For anything else to happen, you'd have to pipe the signal of your mind (that your body generated) into someone else's brain.

It's like you're asking why is this computer that I generated this data visualization from this data on this computer displaying this data visualization on this computer. Umm, because that's what you asked it to do and that's the default? For anything else to have happened, you would have had to redirect the output to a network and then go receive it on a different computer.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#112

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

beardedetim wrote: post #101
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #93

Like Dennett in "Consciousness Explained", both of these authors seem almost entirely focused on what we are conscious of rather than the fact that we are conscious of anything at all. Their descriptions of their work are all centered on the question of what it is that we actually experience. This is is a fascinating question, and entirely worthy of investigation. But it is not the same question as: how is it possibl…

I think they're two sides of the same coin. _How_ do we have any experience will be more easily answered the more we know about _what_ we actually experience. And _what_ we experience is predicated upon _how_ we experience it. I agree both need investigating. The _bigger_ question I see the coin representing is _who or what_ is experiencing in the first place? The way I see it, it's not really _a thing_ experiencing…

That presupposes that (a) panpsychism or semi-panpsychism is false (i.e. that qualia are not inherent properties of either anything at all, nor of "any sufficiently complex system") and that (b) there is a "how" that can be answered.

I agree with you about the "things experiencing things at times".

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#113

Post by carapace »

hibernator149 wrote: post #20

My pet theory is that people who think that consciousness is not a hard problem are P-Zombies that can't experience the problem. On a more serious note, as a materialist, I have a really hard time accepting that my self/experience can't be explained materialistically. It's like I have this nice theory of everything, but it fails when I try to apply it to myself. Reminds me of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

> people who think that consciousness is not a hard problem are P-Zombies that can't experience the problem

I've come to the same conclusion. Meaning no disrespect or insult to them, it seems to me that it must be the case that some folks just haven't noticed themselves.

P.D. Ouspensky talks about learning to "remember myself" in "In Search of the Miraculous" and describes how it was for him to practice changing from thinking one is self-aware to actually becoming self-aware moment-to-moment. There's a passage...

> Two hours later I woke up in the Tavricheskaya, that is, far away. I was going by izvostchik to the printers. The sensation of awakening was extraordinarily vivid. I can almost say that I came to. I remembered everything at once. How I had been walking along the Nadejdinskaya, how I had been remembering myself, how I had thought about cigarettes, and how at this thought I seemed all at once to fall and disappear into a deep sleep.

I suspect people who think that consciousness is not a hard problem must be still "asleep" in this sense, effectively P-Zombies, although the potential is there to become self-aware beings.

- - - -

> as a materialist, I have a really hard time accepting that my self/experience can't be explained materialistically.

Okay, fair enough, but then you have the infinite regress problem. How do you explain material itself materialistically?

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#114

Post by guerrilla »

pessimizer wrote: post #110
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then step into the Star Trek transporter. :) You're obliterated, then perfectly reassembled on the other side. Is that still "you", "subjectively"? Should you or others even care about that question? And, if not, damn, that's ego-killing af.

Or even without transporters: what evidence do I have that the me that ended this sentence is the same me that began it? If anything, I have material evidence that it isn't .

Yeah, you need a theory of identity to answer your questions, first year philosophy sutff [1].

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#115

Post by pessimizer »

guerrilla wrote: post #111
pessimizer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's worse. I don't think theres any reason to identify my perspective with any homunculus. It's watching somebody play a game, not playing it. My question is this: I "know" there are a lot of games being played - why am I watching this one?

It's the one your body generated. Your body took all its data, generated your mind out of that and experiences your mind. For anything else to happen, you'd have to pipe the signal of your mind (that your body generated) into someone else's brain. It's like you're asking why is this computer that I generated this data visualization from this data on this computer displaying this data visualization on this computer. U…

What does it mean for a body to be "mine?" As a materialist, I accept that my body is an assemblage of physical influences. I have no reason to doubt that it has as much self-control as water flowing down a hill. So - does water flowing down a hill have a perspective? Where is it located? It doesn't have a nervous system to blame things on. Is it infinitely divisible? Is it distinct from me? If I pour water from one cup into another, can I say that I'm any less the water as I am my hands, even though I'm controlling the water, getting feedback from the water, subjecting the water as much to my nervous system as I am subjecting my hand itself? What about when I shake your hand? What if I'm blind and I ask you what you can see, then react based on that?

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#117

Post by pessimizer »

guerrilla wrote: post #109
pessimizer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that. It's my body that's doing the thinking, and my body that's typing this comment. The question is why there's some sort of proximity that I have with my comment that I don't have to yours.

I can't conceive of how there couldn't be. Your body gets sensory input, generates your mind and then your body experiences your mind. How could that possibly be dislocated from your body... The very idea is nonsense.

But this is dualism. I don't accept a difference between mind and body as a materialist.

edit: I can use a computer to remind me to use a computer to remind me about something. I can lose the use of my hands and eyes by severing biological wires. I can't pinpoint a distinction between me and the computer. I can't pinpoint a distinction between me and you, other than distance and mechanical connection (which we currently have, with some latency and signal distortion.)

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#118

Post by jbotz »

whaaswijk wrote: post #104
jbotz wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The experiences are real, but the homunculus behind your eyes that you think of as yourself is an illusion. In reality there are a bunch of fairly independent processes talking to each other, sharing the perceptions, reacting to them, feedback from those reactions again become a perception, a "narrator" process that often gives running commentary in your mother-tongue, etc. The interaction of those processes feels li…

If I understand correctly, you're referring to the "easy" problem of consciousness, i.e. the "mechanistic" explanation of how a self could be constructed by the brain. That's an interesting question and I think your take is a coherent and plausible one (from a materialistic perspective). However, I still think this doesn't get around the hard problem of why these interactions actually feel like anything. I've never h…

Actually I do; but... 1) such a Turing machine may have to be a lot more powerful than anything we currently have. With or without invoking QM mechanisms, there is reason to believe that every single neuron does a lot more computation than our simplistic models in current ML neural nets. 2) it may not be possible to "program" a machine to be conscious in the way we feel consciopus, we'd probably have to literally evolve it, i.e. in a rich simulate environment starting with simple artificial "organisms" that "feel" this environment and then getting progressively more complex.

But I do believe in Wolfram's "principle of computational equivalence", and thus that anything that can implement a turing machine can also implement any other complex system, including consciousness.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#119

Post by guerrilla »

pessimizer wrote: post #115
guerrilla wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the one your body generated. Your body took all its data, generated your mind out of that and experiences your mind. For anything else to happen, you'd have to pipe the signal of your mind (that your body generated) into someone else's brain. It's like you're asking why is this computer that I generated this data visualization from this data on this computer displaying this data visualization on this computer. U…

What does it mean for a body to be "mine?" As a materialist, I accept that my body is an assemblage of physical influences. I have no reason to doubt that it has as much self-control as water flowing down a hill. So - does water flowing down a hill have a perspective? Where is it located? It doesn't have a nervous system to blame things on. Is it infinitely divisible? Is it distinct from me? If I pour water from one…

Don't gish gallop.

> What does it mean for a body to be "mine?"

You are your body.

> So - does water flowing down a hill have a perspective? Where is it located?

Why would it? Does it sense and produce a mind? Not that I'm aware of. You could go the pansychism route if you want though. See David Chalmers or something.

> can I say that I'm any less the water as I am my hands, even though I'm controlling the water, getting feedback from the water, subjecting the water as much to my nervous system as I am subjecting my hand itself?

According to enactivism, no. [1] In general, see embodied minds theory. [2]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enactivism

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#120

Post by pessimizer »

guerrilla wrote: post #114
pessimizer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even without transporters: what evidence do I have that the me that ended this sentence is the same me that began it? If anything, I have material evidence that it isn't .

Yeah, you need a theory of identity to answer your questions, first year philosophy sutff [1]. 1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/

Exactly. But having a theory of identity is just a declaration that you subscribe to one, not anything meaningful.
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