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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?

#211

Post by whaaswijk »

jbotz wrote: post #118
whaaswijk wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 evo…

I guess this is where we differ. I don't see a sufficient reason to believe that increasing computational capacity/complexity alone gives rise to consciousness. Moreover, I think there are common sense reasons to believe that consciousness is not substrate independent. Therefore, I don't see it as obvious that Turing completeness is sufficient for consciousness. For example, as someone else on this post has pointed out, a sufficiently complex water pipeline can implement a Turing machine. However, I doubt it would ever be conscious, no matter how large we make it. I think representing and processing information is orthogonal to experiencing.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#213

Post by webmaven »

foobarian wrote: post #188
eatsyourtacos wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Still. why did this inner eye spawn in this head we are in? There are 8 billion heads, why this one? I get what you are saying, but honestly that question doesn't make sense. You are this one because that is how your brain developed.. just like you physically look how you are because of how your body developed. To say "why am I how I am" to me is no different than "why do I look this way?" >Can it be explained physi…

The question is, why did the FPV-experiencing consciousness happen to bind to the body you are in? And why does it stick? I guess it would be interesting to look at why it persists through sleep. And whether there were ever instances of people who wake up with different personalities. Also edge cases around coma/near-death restarts. Or maybe things work like coroutines, and no matter which thread you get assigned to…

> The question is, why did the FPV-experiencing consciousness happen to bind to the body you are in? And why does it stick?

You're asking questions equivalent to "why does the interior of a box happen to bind to that particular piece of folded cardboard? And why is the same interior there when the box is closed and reopened?"

If each brain has a consciousness, and each is uniquely generated by that brain, the 'binding' and 'sticking' questions go away.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#214

Post by _moof »

visarga wrote: post #195
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…

> But it is not the same question as: how is it possible that we have any experience at all? Let me send this ball straight back to you. In the morning when you wake up what happens? You might take something to eat. How would you find the kitchen, how would you recognise the food, or even know you need it? Of course, you are conscious. That's how. It is possible to be conscious because otherwise your body wouldn't be…

You're talking about a different sense of the word "conscious." What you're describing might better be called "reactivity" or something. (Don't get too hung up on the specific word; the point is there are several different meanings of the word "conscious" and the distinctions are critical.) There is no obvious reason why useful interaction with one's environment requires conscious experience, which is the phenomenon we're discussing here.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#215

Post by GeorgeKangas »

naasking wrote: post #190
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…

> But it is not the same question as: how is it possible that we have any experience at all? You're right, it's not the same question. Dennett answers that question too though: you don't have conscious experience, you only think you do. Thus, the questions he and these authors address are the only ones worth investigating. In time, exploring these questions will reveal the illusion behind consciousness, just like the…

"you don't have conscious experience, you only think you do."

That's what illusionism, the position of Keith Frankish, asserts. Dennett mostly seems to support it, as you note, but more equivocally than Frankish.

For those of us who have subjective experience (SE), and are aware of it: SE is the thing, which we know must exist (as noted by Descartes).

Anyone doubting the existence of SE, either is not having SE (i.e. is a "phenomenological zombie"), or (more likely, IMO) has not identified his own SE.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#216

Post by GonzaloRizzo »

visarga wrote: post #206
neosat wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly ^. The first central question is "how is it possible that we have any experience at all?" That leads naturally to the other important question "who is the observer that's aware" i.e. who is the "we"/I that is aware. It's telling that science has made incredible progress (e.g. in the last 100 years) but on questions such as these above, we know little more than people knew then. Although we do know a lot more…

"Who is the observer" is not consistent. Maybe "what part of myself is the observer".

who is the observer who is observing myself?

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#217

Post by visarga »

tablespoon wrote: post #186
throwawayguy7 wrote: post #78

What this article and most others lack is an adult treatment of why serious neuroscientists and philosphers of the mind feel the problem is in fact, hard. To me, the fact that illusion and hallucination are being invoked is strong evidence of handwaving being engaged in to dismiss an otherwise difficult problem. This is not a scientifically rigorous explanation and it doesn't take the other side seriously. As a young…

> To me, the fact that illusion and hallucination are being invoked is strong evidence of handwaving being engaged in to dismiss an otherwise difficult problem. This is not a scientifically rigorous explanation and it doesn't take the other side seriously. Yeah. IIRC, some people say the passage of time is an illusion too. It's pretty hard for me to take seriously anyone who defends their favored theory or interpreta…

> some people say the passage of time is an illusion too

Well, as the article says, the brain makes top-down predictions about our future. So the experience of time is a controlled illusion updated frequently with sense data.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#218

Post by hiacynt »

ncmncm wrote: post #177
carapace wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say anything about "superior". Is being a "P-Zombie" inferior to being self-aware? By what metric could such a comparison be made? Is the water inferior to the wave? Also, "tying themselves in knots" != "noticed themselves", if anything it's the opposite: all knots untie.

All knots can be untied, if that is what you choose to do. But not everybody chooses that. Thus far you have not chosen that. "Noticing yourself" is something literally everyone does. Not everyone ties themselves in knots. The alternative to tying yourself in knots is to think clearly without inventing falsehoods. "P-zombies" is just another word for solipsism. The moment somebody proposes either, you know there will…

P-zombies and solipsism are two totally different things.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#219

Post by visarga »

dTal wrote: post #209
zubspace wrote: post #23

What I find fascinating about consciousness is that it seems to be bound to your location. But how and why? Why are you inside of your body and not in someone elses? The article poses this question, but leaves it unanswered. For me it begs the question: If conscousness is bound to a location, is it possible to transfer consciousness from one entity to another? Is there some kind of thing we did not yet detect? What h…

>Why are you inside of your body and not in someone elses? This seems definitionally incoherent, on the level of "if I had been Shakespeare, who would he have been?" If "you" were "in" "someone else's" body... you'd be them, not you.

Can human GPT-3? Yes, human can GPT-3 too.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#220

Post by visarga »

agent008t wrote: post #28
zubspace wrote: post #23

What I find fascinating about consciousness is that it seems to be bound to your location. But how and why? Why are you inside of your body and not in someone elses? The article poses this question, but leaves it unanswered. For me it begs the question: If conscousness is bound to a location, is it possible to transfer consciousness from one entity to another? Is there some kind of thing we did not yet detect? What h…

Why is it bound to your location? You are just getting sensory input from a particular set of devices: eyes, ears, tactile, brain (thoughts/feelings/memories). But 'you' are not any of these. 'You', the observer receiving and experiencing all these readings, can be anywhere. With meditation, you can get a clearer sense of what is really 'you', and what is just being observed/experienced by 'you'. But 'you' are not yo…

> But 'you' are not any of these.

Ha ha, without eyes, ears, tactile, and the rest of senses what would be left? Brain a in vat, is THAT the real you?

The self is an actor in a game, you are your game, not the "observer", a weird concept if I may say so. As if it is not related to the game it observes. Its very existence is on the line, though, one missed observation and it could be dead. You are the actor, not the observer, because you got skin in the game.

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