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

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#371

Post by ncmncm » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 11:23 AM UTC

rytill wrote: post #223

ncmncm wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think there is a hard problem, it is on you to articulate one. Thus far I have not encountered one that does not depend on undefined words or circular arguments, i.e. knots.

Do you think there is such a thing as objective morality? Not just human ethics, or social norms or whatever, but that some things that occur are "better" than other things in some important sense. Or maybe, that certain actions are "good" and others are "bad"? Like for instance, the experience a human would have when relaxing in a hot tub with their friends, is "better" in some important, real sense compared to the…

There are certainly things I like better than other things. There is probably a fair bit of overlap with what you like, but also certain to be differences. Where they differ, am I right, or you? If one of us is not wrong, then one is not objectively better.

A system for understanding consciousness that depends on objective merit will face very stiff competition from those that don't.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#372

Post by rytill » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 12:17 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #371

rytill wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there is such a thing as objective morality? Not just human ethics, or social norms or whatever, but that some things that occur are "better" than other things in some important sense. Or maybe, that certain actions are "good" and others are "bad"? Like for instance, the experience a human would have when relaxing in a hot tub with their friends, is "better" in some important, real sense compared to the…

There are certainly things I like better than other things. There is probably a fair bit of overlap with what you like, but also certain to be differences. Where they differ, am I right, or you? If one of us is not wrong, then one is not objectively better. A system for understanding consciousness that depends on objective merit will face very stiff competition from those that don't.

Wouldn’t you say the experience of “being you” or “being me” would be part of the system of how consciousness works? And therefore, whether you like something or I like something, it’s part of the happening of consciousness.

Maybe “you like the experience of drinking tea” is a totally compatible statement with “I don’t like the experience of drinking tea” in an objective sense.

I would say it’s not that consciousness depends on objective merit, but that it could be the other way around.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#373

Post by simonh » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 1:15 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #245

simonh wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an argument that an amobea must be concious, no?

Any self replicator can be. I am not sure about non-replicating agents like some AIs. Besides having a way to copy what it learns into the future, self replication also provides a goal, a guiding force - of course, the goal is to avoid death before replication. Another great quality of self replication is its open-endedness. It can become anything as long as it keeps replicating. For these three qualities I consider…

Prions self-replicate. Are they concious?

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#374

Post by naasking » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:49 PM UTC

throwawayguy7 wrote: post #357

naasking wrote: post #197

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. 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…

> Overall, He does dismiss the hard problem, calling it stage magic.

Because it is stage magic given his theory of mind, which he elaborated 30 years ago. I would certainly like to see these insults though if you could provide a citation.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#375

Post by naasking » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

darkscape wrote: post #359

naasking wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is reason that permits us to correct those errors, not phenomenal experience. Our perceptions and "experiences" deceive us all of the time, and through reason we have found many of those flaws. Consciousness is the final boss fight, and the battle has begun:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00...

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#376

Post by naasking » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #361

naasking wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is notable about qualia is that it is possible to have them at all. An illusion is definitionally a qualia. You cannot have an illusion without qualia existing. I think that's incorrect, as it relies on a definition of "illusion" that begs the question on the existence of a subject, just like Descartes. Define illusion as "a perception that directly entails a false conclusion", and there is no subject needed.…

Where does that false conclusion occur? What is the entity in which it occurs? There is no "conclusion" here in the sense of "2+2=4". What is at stake is not a reasoned, or evidential analysis of how the world is. It is, rather, that subjective experience exists (we know it exists because we have subjective experience, and whether the experience is of something invented and false does not change the fact that the exp…

> It is, rather, that subjective experience exists (we know it exists because we have subjective experience, and whether the experience is of something invented and false does not change the fact that the experience exists).

What is in dispute here is what "subjective experience" means. If we both agree that "subjective experience" is a phenomenon that can in principle be captured by a third person objective description, then we can agree that it exists and that our observations are actually evidence of its existence.

But this is not what most people mean by this term, and it is that term that is a fiction on the eliminativist view.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#377

Post by naasking » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:58 PM UTC

LocalH wrote: post #355

naasking wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Maybe there is more to find. History suggests otherwise though, so I'm not optimistic and continue default to non-existence, per Russel's teapot.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#378

Post by dkersten » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #164

dkersten wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it possible to transfer consciousness from one entity to another? transfer, no, because consciousness is inextricably linked to the brain. What if we can transplant the brain itself? The consciousness is still contained in and created by the same brain, but every other part of the experience (sensory input) are from another body effectively transferring consciousness between bodies.

It takes surprisingly little effort to trick your consciousness. VR isn't even that good yet in terms of resolution and it's quite convincing. If you were put in a VR headset as a child and given a dogs body or something it's doubtful you could tell the difference. A similar feeling is present when flying FPV drones. A good pilot typically feels like they are the drone. Your mind immediately separates the drone from…

You're right and we don't even need VR for it, its easy to get engrossed in a videogame and project yourself into the game.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#379

Post by naasking » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #360

naasking wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-…

> In the quote I included above, who is the "you" that is telling and who is the "yourself" that is being told?

This is still begging the question by the use of "who". There is no "who", there is no self, there are only thoughts that refer to a "self", but the referrant does not actually exist in the way that's implied by these thoughts; there's no spirit or homunculus in your mind to which "self" actually refers.

> 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).

I think the paper I linked is a good start on answering this question. Per my other reply to you, whether this kind of answer is satisfactory depends on what you take "subjective experience" to mean.

If you buy the thought experiments (p-zombies, Mary's room) that suggest some sort of "ineffability", then this explanation will not be satisfactory. Personally, none of those thought experiments are remotely convincing.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#380

Post by naasking » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

darkscape wrote: post #366

naasking wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> No, it's actually, "ta-da, we're not conscious! but here's why we think we are!" And of course the "think" has a quality to it that the hard problem is about. It's interesting how illusionists and eliminativists explain away aspects of SE by invoking (other) aspects of SE. "You merely have an illusion of being conscious" - that illusion is the hard problem, so now explain that illusion. I could be having an illusio…

> It's interesting how illusionists and eliminativists explain away aspects of SE by invoking (other) aspects of SE. "You merely have an illusion of being conscious" - that illusion is the hard problem, so now explain that illusion.

I've explained this elsewhere, but will repeat here: this argument relies on a definition of "illusion" that begs the question on the existence of a subject, just like Descartes. Define illusion as "a perception that directly entails a false conclusion", and there is no subject needed, and no hard problem remains.

It's like you're asking me to explain the dinosaur you saw while you were hallucinating. Sure, I agree we should explore the biochemistry and neurology involved in dream-like states that yield distorted perceptions that imply false conclusions about reality. Let's not go so far as to posit that those distorted perceptions are real if there's no corroborating evidence of their existence.