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What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

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Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#71

Post by nicoburns »

bnralt wrote: post #67
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument you're making is just eliding the "hard problem". We can trivially imagine an electronic circuit that registers different current levels when exposed to red or blue light. Nobody (that I'm aware of) suggests that there is an experience within the electronic circuit, despite the fact that it "senses" different frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. The circuit is qualia-free. You, on the other hand,…

> Nobody (that I'm aware of) suggests that there is an experience within the electronic circuit, despite the fact that it "senses" different frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. The circuit is qualia-free. Your thought experiment actually shows why a materialistic model makes much more sense than any model that takes "the hard problem" seriously. It's trivially easy to show that the human brown is much more c…

> The only evidence I've seen anyone provide for qualia is that they feel they have it

Is that not sufficient? It's Descartes' "I think therefore I am". Qualia are just experiences, so if you experience something then they exist.

I don't think qualia need to be non-physical. The "hard problem" remains even if they are physical, because they don't exist within our current understanding of physics and thus still need to be explained.

Actually, reading https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Uses, it seems that your restricted definition of qualia "Qualia as intrinsic, nonphysical, ineffable properties" is one use of the term. But it also has a more general meaning:

"Qualia as phenomenal character. Consider your visual experience as you stare at a bright turquoise color patch in a paint store. There is something it is like for you subjectively to undergo that experience. What it is like to undergo the experience is very different from what it is like for you to experience a dull brown color patch. This difference is a difference in what is often called ‘phenomenal character’."

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#73

Post by nicoburns »

lordnacho wrote: post #56
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm familiar with IIT. I don't believe it suggests that a photosensor has qualia.

Isn't the parent and related answers pointing towards the idea that there's a level of complexity above which you need to be to see those qualia? A single little circuit might not be the one that is conscious, but a bunch of them connected together might exhibit patterns that we could call experience? Maybe the analogy is that a single DNA molecule is not a living thing but that molecule along with a bunch of others…

It's worth pointing out that there's zero evidence that complexity is required for conscious. Our only evidence that beings other than ourselves are conscious is that we know ourselves to be conscious and they seem similar to us. IF inanimate objects were conscious, we wouldn't know because... well, none of us actually has direct evidence than anything other than ourselves is conscious.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#74

Post by nicoburns »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #32
layer8 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People fundamentally disagree about whether there is anything besides the “of”. My personal introspection tells mere there is only “of”, because what I perceive as my consciousness, is, by virtue of being a perception, in the end just an “of” itself. There is some sort of recursivity involved in the whole construct of consciousness, which makes it hard to get a grasp on. In some sense, consciousness is just that, bei…

The argument you're making is just eliding the "hard problem". We can trivially imagine an electronic circuit that registers different current levels when exposed to red or blue light. Nobody (that I'm aware of) suggests that there is an experience within the electronic circuit, despite the fact that it "senses" different frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. The circuit is qualia-free. You, on the other hand,…

> Nobody (that I'm aware of) suggests that there is an experience within the electronic circuit, despite the fact that it "senses" different frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. The circuit is qualia-free.

I personally feel like it's hard to justify being anything other than agnostic on this question (and indeed the question of whether inanimate objects like rocks have consciousness). Reason being essentially that we have so little understanding of consciousness that it seems hard to justify claiming any knowledge of it at all.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#75

Post by bnralt »

nicoburns wrote: post #71
bnralt wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody (that I'm aware of) suggests that there is an experience within the electronic circuit, despite the fact that it "senses" different frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. The circuit is qualia-free. Your thought experiment actually shows why a materialistic model makes much more sense than any model that takes "the hard problem" seriously. It's trivially easy to show that the human brown is much more c…

> The only evidence I've seen anyone provide for qualia is that they feel they have it Is that not sufficient? It's Descartes' "I think therefore I am". Qualia are just experiences, so if you experience something then they exist. I don't think qualia need to be non-physical. The "hard problem" remains even if they are physical, because they don't exist within our current understanding of physics and thus still need t…

> Is that not sufficient? It's Descartes' "I think therefore I am". Qualia are just experiences, so if you experience something then they exist.

If you experience something, some experience exists. It does not mean that qualia exists. I've had people use the same personal experiential evidence for the soul, god, reiki, and a whole host of other metaphysical phenomenon. Hopefully we can agree that someone relating their experience of the metaphysical is not sufficient evidence that the metaphysical exists (if it is, we need to believe in a whole host of things).

I've followed a lot of neuroscience research. I've never seen any that says "hey, we've run into this problem, but it can't be solved by our current understanding of physics." The "hard problem" seems to reside entirely in the realm of philosophy. There might be a few neuroscientists who engage it in an informal way from time to time, but by and large the people who actually study the mind don't seem to have this problem.

That's not to say that there's not a lot left to learn. There is. But there's no evidence that anything like the "hard problem" or "qualia" exists or is a barrier to our understanding of the brain.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#76

Post by smusamashah »

If we had a system that can show us our thought process and we could explain every aspect of it, will we still call it being conscious? (took this question from Westworld where Maeve gets her hands on the tablet showing what she is thinking at that moment)

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#77

Post by mlsu »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #32
layer8 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People fundamentally disagree about whether there is anything besides the “of”. My personal introspection tells mere there is only “of”, because what I perceive as my consciousness, is, by virtue of being a perception, in the end just an “of” itself. There is some sort of recursivity involved in the whole construct of consciousness, which makes it hard to get a grasp on. In some sense, consciousness is just that, bei…

The argument you're making is just eliding the "hard problem". We can trivially imagine an electronic circuit that registers different current levels when exposed to red or blue light. Nobody (that I'm aware of) suggests that there is an experience within the electronic circuit, despite the fact that it "senses" different frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. The circuit is qualia-free. You, on the other hand,…

Really?

+ Human beings

+ Dogs

+ Bugs

+ Plants

+ Eukaryotes

+ Viruses

+ Proteins

+ Molecules

+ Atoms

+ Subatomic Particles

+ ???

+ Pure Information, ones and zeros

Here is a line (--------). Place it so that above it, things are conscious, and below it, things are not conscious. It seems very obvious to me that there is nothing special about human beings, (or dogs, or bugs, or plants, or wherever you draw the line), that makes them special and conscious. For example; if you assert that the line is at "Bugs" I could not possibly disprove or prove you right, although I would suspect that you might be a Bug. Likewise, I could assert that your circuit has qualia, and you could never prove or disprove me.

Proving or disproving me is solving the hard problem. It's hard because it's meaningless, because consciousness is either shared by all things; or, shared by no things. Which is, imho, a distinction without a difference.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#78

Post by nicoburns »

bnralt wrote: post #75
nicoburns wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only evidence I've seen anyone provide for qualia is that they feel they have it Is that not sufficient? It's Descartes' "I think therefore I am". Qualia are just experiences, so if you experience something then they exist. I don't think qualia need to be non-physical. The "hard problem" remains even if they are physical, because they don't exist within our current understanding of physics and thus still need t…

> Is that not sufficient? It's Descartes' "I think therefore I am". Qualia are just experiences, so if you experience something then they exist. If you experience something, some experience exists. It does not mean that qualia exists. I've had people use the same personal experiential evidence for the soul, god, reiki, and a whole host of other metaphysical phenomenon. Hopefully we can agree that someone relating the…

> I've followed a lot of neuroscience research. I've never seen any that says "hey, we've run into this problem, but it can't be solved by our current understanding of physics."

That's because neuroscience explicitly avoids the philosophical problems of the mind as a premise of the entire discipline. The "hard problem" is that we can reach a point where neuroscience has completely explained human behaviour, and we still won't have explained the existence of experience or how it relates to the physical world. Neuroscience doesn't worry about the "hard problem" because it isn't even close to solving the "easy problem" yet.

> If you experience something, some experience exists. It does not mean that qualia exists.

I believe that "qualia" as used in the context of the "hard problem" is just "experience". It doesn't imply anything more specific than that. To quote Chalmers who coined the term "hard problem":

"...even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?"

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousnes...)

What he is talking about is just experience. Not a more specific meaning of qualia (i.e. definition 1, not 2, 3, or 4 on this list https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Uses)

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#79

Post by mlsu »

mlsu wrote: post #77
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument you're making is just eliding the "hard problem". We can trivially imagine an electronic circuit that registers different current levels when exposed to red or blue light. Nobody (that I'm aware of) suggests that there is an experience within the electronic circuit, despite the fact that it "senses" different frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. The circuit is qualia-free. You, on the other hand,…

Really? + Human beings + Dogs + Bugs + Plants + Eukaryotes + Viruses + Proteins + Molecules + Atoms + Subatomic Particles + ??? + Pure Information, ones and zeros Here is a line (--------). Place it so that above it, things are conscious, and below it, things are not conscious. It seems very obvious to me that there is nothing special about human beings, (or dogs, or bugs, or plants, or wherever you draw the line), t…

As an aside, you can trivially place the line above humans:

+ ???

+ The Galaxy

+ The entire Biosphere

+ Regions of Space

+ Corporations

+ Humans

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#80

Post by b33j0r »

nicoburns wrote: post #69
otikik wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how it is possible to be conscious of anything at all I ... have always seen that as something obvious. On a high level, isn't consciousness the result of combining a bunch of neurons (a "hardware", of sorts) in certain preexisting configuration (a "software" of sorts) and stimuli (inputs) ?. To me the problem is on the details. The separation between layers is not needed because there's no limited consciousness ne…

I think you're missing the point. A brain could encode "pleasure", and respond appropriately to that and other complex stimuli without there being anyone actually feeling that pleasure. But there is, and that's unexplained. That's not just a defect in our understanding of brains, it's something which we don't understand on the level of physics.

Yep. People talk about the hard problem, but it’s lots of things.

The consciousness process might have obvious components, and many non-obvious ones, but until those factors explain why it seems like a first-person experience…

Well dang, a “first-person experience” remains basically undefined! So we’re not even to that bridge yet!

My guess is that both questions will be answered at about the same time. I highly doubt that we’ll just get scientifically used to “well we get how brains work, so that’s the self.”

At least as long as anyone resembling us keeps wondering, we’ll keep looking.

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