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

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#351

Post by naasking » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 12:52 AM UTC

loganmhb wrote: post #266

naasking wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The question is not whether perceptions are true -- that's irrelevant. Undoubtedly perceptions present a skewed and unreliable view onto reality. It's whether they exist at all. You can't trick someone who isn't looking. > Except everybody knows there is no "I", you're just a bundle of atoms, and a bundle that's changing from moment to moment. This is begging the question in the other direction.

> The question is not whether perceptions are true -- that's irrelevant. Undoubtedly perceptions present a skewed and unreliable view onto reality. It's whether they exist at all.

Perceptions are not experience. Nobody denies the existence of perceptions, the question is whether perceptions carry something "extra", something "ineffable" that we call "qualitative experience", something that cannot even in principle be captured by a third person objective description.

Algorithms and machines arguably have perceptions but not experience. Eliminativism is the position that we don't have experience either, we're only a collection of perceptions arranged in such a way that it leads us to the conclusion that our experience is real.

> This is begging the question in the other direction.

I'm not begging the question because I'm not saying eliminativism is true because matter is all we can measure. I'm simply saying that it's demonstrably true that by every measure currently available, we are just a bundle of atoms changing from moment to moment. The only people who claim otherwise and are given any kind of credibility, are people who cite fallacious thought experiments like Mary's room as "evidence". Not very compelling frankly.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#352

Post by bqmjjx0kac » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 12:59 AM UTC

jqgatsby wrote: post #322

rland wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the same, but in the opposite direction -- and then back again -- from hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). Over a much longer time period (several hours). Craziest thing I have ever experienced. Basically, when you have hypoglycemia, you lose "fine" things first, and you sort of lose things in order, from "fine" (picking things up, balancing, seeing small details) towards "coarse" (talking, walking) and then of…

Emotion seems to be a form of super-intelligence or pre-intelligence. Every time I worry about the rate at which we are supposedly approaching "artificial intelligence", I ask myself how close we are to being able to synthesize artificial emotion . Seems like a comfortable 1000 years, if not much much more.

Here's a head start for any future AI engineers in the year 3022.

    struct EmotionalState {
      int happiness;
      int angriness;
      int hungriness;
    };

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#353

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 1:06 AM UTC

naasking wrote: post #350

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is preposterous to suggest that Dennett is not recognizing his own SE. Dennett, however, requires that the mysterious part of his own SE must be explainable by a non-mysterious aspect of SE. He just doesn't have any proposal for what or how that could be. He wants to wave his hands and say, "well, we have detectors for this and that and these predictive capabilities and these modelling systems, and so ...…

> He just doesn't have any proposal for what or how that could be. He wants to wave his hands and say, "well, we have detectors for this and that and these predictive capabilities and these modelling systems, and so ... ta-da, we're conscious!" I don't think this gives Dennett enough credit, because what our instruments are all telling us is that there no single, indivisible "self" at all; we are all made up of const…

From that post;

> There's no one thing, not even a collection of things, that can be identified with what we think of as the conscious mind. Instead, we've got a whole bunch of different things, none of which has "consciousness" in a traditional sense, and these come together in a way that makes it seem as though we're conscious.

I just don't buy this at all. This seems precisely as I described it:

> "well, we have detectors for this and that and these predictive capabilities and these modelling systems, and so ... ta-da, we're conscious!"

Also, note the heavy lifting being done by "makes it seem" from the Reddit quote. This goes back to the basic problem: Dennett (and the authors in TFA) are describing what we are conscious of, what makes up our consciousness, but he and they are not addressing how it possible for there to be any subjective experience at all.

I would go a little further, even: the whole reason why there is a sense of self is precisely because there is a singular subjective experience. You can figure out what drives that experience, and even note that it isn't rooted in any kind of singular and/or stable physical system, and that's actually really interesting. But that's not addressing how subjective experience is possible at all.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#354

Post by LocalH » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 1:17 AM UTC

p_noumenon wrote: post #303

alar44 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nothing like that. Your memory is wiped out, you don't know who you are, you don't know when you are. It's like you're in an alien world, nothing looks familiar. Your ears are kind of buzzing and ringing, your visual field is fucked up, etc. The last layers of your neural network aren't turned on yet. It's pretty weird.

...sounds exactly like waking up from a dream.

Do you regularly wake up extremely groggy and drained? That usually only happens to me if I am awoken mid-REM cycle. Perhaps that's worth investigating for you?

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#355

Post by LocalH » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 1:21 AM UTC

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…

> In time, exploring these questions will reveal the illusion behind consciousness

This view is a bit closed-minded, if you ask me. You may also find that exploring those questions reveals something that you could never have imagined beforehand. You may end up finding out that consciousness is not the illusion, but everything else we perceive is.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#356

Post by naasking » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #353

naasking wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He just doesn't have any proposal for what or how that could be. He wants to wave his hands and say, "well, we have detectors for this and that and these predictive capabilities and these modelling systems, and so ... ta-da, we're conscious!" I don't think this gives Dennett enough credit, because what our instruments are all telling us is that there no single, indivisible "self" at all; we are all made up of const…

From that post; > There's no one thing, not even a collection of things, that can be identified with what we think of as the conscious mind. Instead, we've got a whole bunch of different things, none of which has "consciousness" in a traditional sense, and these come together in a way that makes it seem as though we're conscious. I just don't buy this at all. This seems precisely as I described it: > "well, we have d…

> I just don't buy this at all. This seems precisely as I described it: "well, we have detectors for this and that and these predictive capabilities and these modelling systems, and so ... ta-da, we're conscious!"

No, it's actually, "ta-da, we're not conscious! but here's why we think we are!"

> but he and they are not addressing how it possible for there to be any subjective experience at all.

Because neuroscience will do this by elaborating the mechanisms. Like in this paper:

The attention schema theory: a mechanistic account of subjective awareness, http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00...

An analogy for tech nerds would be how the illusion of multitasking on a single CPU machine arises from imperceptibly fast context switching. Something similar happens in that theory, where our perceptual faculties are constantly switching between signals from our internal representations and our senses, thus producing a simplified but false conclusion that subjectivity is present.

> I would go a little further, even: the whole reason why there is a sense of self is precisely because there is a singular subjective experience.

And I'd say you're just telling yourself a retroactively edited story that there is a singular subjective experience in order to make sense of our own thoughts and behaviours. In fact, this sort of retroactive editing has been demonstrated multiple times.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#357

Post by throwawayguy7 » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 1:38 AM UTC

naasking wrote: post #197

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. Dennett doesn't dismiss the difficulty of the problem, he just dismisses that the difficulty is where people think it is. For instance, he would fully agree that the brain is insanely complex and just elaborating how information processing works will be very,…

I'm specifically referring to reviews and comments Dennet has made of the work of totally secular, atheist or agnostic , non Christian philosphers of mind and neuroscientists. He literally just tosses insults around in some of his reviews and it's kinda pathetic that such an eminent scholar engages in such tactics.

Overall, He does dismiss the hard problem, calling it stage magic. This is exactly the tactic you might imagine an intelligent man would use after having spent a lifetime to fail to explain anything meaningful.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#358

Post by throwawayguy7 » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 1:41 AM UTC

visarga wrote: post #217

tablespoon wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I find the illusion explanation for complex phenomena unhelpful.

At best, this is doing nothing to actually explain - it has no value. 'Well yes, consciousness is difficult to understand because of an error in our reasoning' . It's almost circular reasoning ... you're explaining mental phenomena with mental phenomena.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#359

Post by darkscape » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 2:01 AM UTC

naasking wrote: post #346

pcwalton wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)overt…

By contrast, Strawson is so enthralled with the primacy of experience that he can easily dismiss the demonstrable facts that literally everything his experience is telling him is a fiction (the world is not classical, there is no continuity of self, that our perceptions reflect evolutionary fitness and not truth, etc., etc.), and yet still maintain that experience itself must somehow be an exception. Pretty absurd in…

It can't be "literally everything". It is experience that enables us to correct those misconceptions in the first place. It is by experiencing that we discovered and experimentally confirmed quantum theory i.e. that "the world is not classical". It is by reflecting on his experiences that Dennett came to his conclusions.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#360

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 2:14 AM UTC

naasking wrote: post #356

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From that post; > There's no one thing, not even a collection of things, that can be identified with what we think of as the conscious mind. Instead, we've got a whole bunch of different things, none of which has "consciousness" in a traditional sense, and these come together in a way that makes it seem as though we're conscious. I just don't buy this at all. This seems precisely as I described it: > "well, we have d…

> I just don't buy this at all. This seems precisely as I described it: "well, we have detectors for this and that and these predictive capabilities and these modelling systems, and so ... ta-da, we're conscious!" No, it's actually, "ta-da, we're not conscious! but here's why we think we are!" > but he and they are not addressing how it possible for there to be any subjective experience at all. Because neuroscience w…

> And I'd say you're just telling yourself a retroactively edited story that there is a singular subjective experience in order to make sense of our own thoughts and behaviours

So look, "The Intentional Stance" is for me one of the most important books I've ever read in this general area, and I totally buy all the stuff Dennett and others have built up around the idea that what we are conscious of is an edited, self-created, intention-injected model of our own selves (to whatever extent there is a unitary self to be a model of).

But I don't think that any of that addresses "how can we be conscious of anything at all".

In the quote I included above, who is the "you" that is telling and who is the "yourself" that is being told? But more importantly, what does "being told" mean? How does one have an experience (whether it is being told, or being cold, or being old)? It's not enough to say "we're not conscious, we just think we are" - the conundrum of consciousness is not about how humans think, but the fact that we have subjective experience (which may includes lies told to ourselves by ourselves).