What’s so hard about understanding consciousness? • Hacker News Board

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#271

Post by chasd00 » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 9:47 PM UTC

grishka wrote: post #29

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…

To me it's obvious: since consciousness arises from external and internal stimuli of the body, part of the physical world that it could perceive and affect is limited by the physical capabilities of the body. If there was a technology to hook up a computer to your brain and you could then have it feed you data from a sensor located somewhere far away, you would effectively extend the physical capabilities of your bod…

i wonder if the reverse is true. If you were very old and floating in space after the last blackhole has evaporated, entropy is evenly distributed, and time becomes meaningless would your consciousness end? Without any input there would be no output.

edit: i suppose a counter point would be sensory deprivation tanks should reduce your consciousness however most report it to be enhanced during the experience.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#272

Post by agent008t » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #220

agent008t wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Just try a simple experiment. It will only take 10 minutes.

Set an alarm on your phone for 10 minutes. Sit down in a quiet room. Close your eyes. Your goal is to observe the physical sensations produced by natural breathing in your nose for the 10 minutes. Give it your full attention and not miss a single breath, and really feel how each breath in and out feels at the tip of your nose as the air passes it. Easy, right?

Except you will probably find that before long, instead of having your attention on the breath like you fully intended, your attention will be on some thoughts. Where did the thoughts come from? Were 'you' thinking them? Or did the thoughts just arise and steal your attention, despite YOU fully intending to be paying attention to the breath for the 10 minutes? What is then your relationship to 'your' thoughts?

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#273

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

jostmey wrote: post #176

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…

What is consciousness? Self-awareness seems like a good definition that can be explained in the context of artificial intelligence research. What is the experience of consciousness? The experience of an emotion? To me, this seems beyond the reach of our current understanding

[deleted]

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#274

Post by pcwalton » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #228

GeorgeKangas wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> Dennett mostly seems to support it, as you note, but more equivocally than Frankish. I believe Dennett is an eliminative materialist, so he would consider qualia to be an illusion. > 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 Descsartes). Descartes begged the question. Just deconstruct it: " I think therefore I am" presupposes the…

I always found illusionism completely nonsensical, for the reasons that Galen Strawson put forth in "Realistic Monism" [1] (emphasis mine):

> Some of them — Dennett is a prime example — are so in thrall to the fundamental intuition of dualism, the intuition that the experiential and the physical are utterly and irreconcilably different, that they are prepared to deny the existence of experience, more or less (c)overtly, because they are committed to physicalism, i.e. physicSalism.

> "‘They are prepared to deny the existence of experience.’ At this we should stop and wonder. I think we should feel very sober, and a little afraid, at the power of human credulity, the capacity of human minds to be gripped by theory, by faith. For this particular denial is the strangest thing that has ever happened in the whole history of human thought, not just the whole history of philosophy. It falls, unfortunately, to philosophy, not religion, to reveal the deepest woo-woo of the human mind. I find this grievous, but, next to this denial, every known religious belief is only a little less sensible than the belief that grass is green.

[1]: https://www.sjsu.edu/people/anand.vaidya/courses/c2/s0/Reali...

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#275

Post by davidhs » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

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…

Well, I think in some sense it's all just "controlled" hallucination, but, to me, it doesn't say much.

Sometimes I think people have some intuitive sense of how things ought to work but but they can't reconcile it with physics description of the world. For example, how is it possible that a physical system such as a brain can have experiences, such as colors, love, objects, music, etc.

I think the simplest answer to that conundrum is that, yes, physical systems can not have these sorts of experiences, they do not follow from the theories or descriptions. But what you can do instead is simulate a world with such magical qualities. This is what I think some parts of the brain do, is to simulate the world that we personally find ourselves in.

Then the real question is how does the brain do that? How does it work? What are its learning rules? What does it end up learning?

My guess is that it ends up describing this universe (including ourselves) that we find ourselves in.

Why? You could imagine that the signals coming into the brain from the rest of the body are just a bit array that is changing all the time. What does it mean? That's for the brain to find out, so it's always in the process of making and updating predictive models of its input. Why? So that the biological robot that you are in control of navigate successfully in the physical world and meet the needs of the organism, e.g. eat food, drink water, keep itself in the right temperature, keep itself from being harmed, and such.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#276

Post by justinpombrio » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

mckeed wrote: post #270

davidhs wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the reason we have experience at all is because that is being simulated by the brain. For me a more interesting question is how it is being simulated by the brain.

Isn't that just layering an extraneous concept on top without explaining anything? Is there a difference between experiencing something (real) and having a "simulated" experience of experiencing it?

Yes. If not for that, we wouldn't have so many bloody articles about consciousness.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#277

Post by jm__87 » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC

p_noumenon wrote: post #248

Osiris wrote: post #196

I do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and a common submission technique is to cut off blood flow to the brain (known as a blood choke). I've lost consciousness twice after being put into a blood choke. The experience of regaining consciousness is visceral. For those that haven't experienced it, it's very much like a turning on a computer. Initially, your brain does not (or cannot) process input like vision, sound, touch, etc. Slo…

What you just described sounds exactly like waking up from a dream.

Definitely not the same. I feel when you dream you feel some time has passed. I've lost consciousness a number of times for different reasons and the common feeling is it doesn't feel like any time has passed. One moment I was awake and the very next I'm on the ground, my head hurts and have no idea what is going on.. for the first 30 seconds I wouldn't be able to tell you my name, where I am, what I was doing, etc. Then it all just comes back after a minute or two and you realize what happened.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#278

Post by mckeed » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC

abletonlive wrote: post #222

Dylan16807 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think it's possible to seek nutrients without having experiences?

I don't believe it is. This is the problem w/ the philosophical zombies, they are self defeating examples and can't exist in anything but a thought experiment. The fact that you're seeking nutrients at all means you can distinguish between sensory input, and therefore are experiencing something. If you can't distinguish between sensory input, then you are not experiencing anything. How can you be an effective seeker…

There sure seems to be a distinction between having sensory input and being able to reflect on that experience. How else could you explain the phenomenon of blindsight?

I agree philosophical zombies are impossible, but only because they wouldn't be able to reliably talk about consciousness without a conscious "zombie master". See https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/zombies-sequence

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#279

Post by davidhs » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #14

> If you are feeling pain, for example, this gives you very actionable knowledge about what you should do next in order to survive. This seems exactly backwards to me. The visceral sensation of pain exists precisely in order to bypass your conscious decision-making. When you're hurting, your body doesn't want you to start weighing the pros and cons of various courses of action, it wants you to deal with the injury ri…

Certain kinds of pain stimulus causes you automatically to move away from it, such as when you put your hand on a stove.

But parts of your body might be sending pain signals into the brain for which there are no automatic actions for, e.g. you are in a sauna and it's too much.

The state of the simulation that you are in is updated with this pain signal. So, now, you might experience discomfort in the sauna and it is repellent so you might want to construct an action plan to move away from the source that is causing the pain (the fact you're in a sauna). But you might want to resist that for a moment and ignore the pain, maybe you have another conflicting goal which is to try to stay longer in the sauna than you're used to. Eventually the discomfort and pain might become overwhelming so you move out of the sauna.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#280

Post by monktastic1 » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 10:04 PM UTC

davidhs wrote: post #262

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…

Well, the reason we have experience at all is because that is being simulated by the brain. For me a more interesting question is how it is being simulated by the brain.

If what I'm having is a "simulated experience," then where do "real experiences" exist?