151–160 of 179 posts
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Philosophers grapple with the problem the same way Greeks used mythology to grapple with the problem of reality. Thunder is not thrown by some god named Zeus. and the impossibility of a mathematical model describing consciousness cannot be explained away by a Chinese room argument that has tons and tons of qualitative holes in it. If an atom can be described by a mathematical equation that means so can groups of atom…
> But what chatGPT is, is not clear. I would posit that it is clear. It's simply a whole bunch of toasters put together (that is, a long list of if-then statements). If you're trying to argue that consciousness is merely a bunch of if-then statements, then yes, ChatGPT might be conscious. But then it's going to be much harder to argue that a toaster isn't conscious, which I thought we both agreed with. > Likely you b…
The combination of multitudes of if-else statements forms a macro structure. It is this emergent macro structure that we call consciousness. As stated before the exact interconnect of this macro structure can't be fully articulated yet.
>This seems a bit dismissive, and although I myself am a substance dualist (which is generally seen as a metaphysical position), most materialists aren't mechanistic in their interpretation of consciousness
My arguments are based on likelihood derived from logic and evidence meaning While we don't fully know if a soul fits in this framework, we certainly do not yet have the capability to derive it's existence/likelihood from evidence or first principles. Thus there's really nothing to talk about as it's an argument outside of known logic. What is the point of arguing about topics we don't know about? There is no point. I'm being dismissive because there is literally nothing left to talk about for either of us. Logic and evidence is also the only shared principles that seem consistent across individuals so best keep discussions in that realm fully.
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> But what chatGPT is, is not clear. I would posit that it is clear. It's simply a whole bunch of toasters put together (that is, a long list of if-then statements). If you're trying to argue that consciousness is merely a bunch of if-then statements, then yes, ChatGPT might be conscious. But then it's going to be much harder to argue that a toaster isn't conscious, which I thought we both agreed with. > Likely you b…
>I would posit that it is clear. It's simply a whole bunch of toasters put together (that is, a long list of if-then statements). If you're trying to argue that consciousness is merely a bunch of if-then statements, then yes, ChatGPT might be conscious. But then it's going to be much harder to argue that a toaster isn't conscious, which I thought we both agreed with. The combination of multitudes of if-else statement…
It can be, and it's called the theory of computation. It's been extensively studied for the past century and a half, and, all-in-all, it's not even particularly strong. For example, most real numbers aren't even computable, Godel showed that consistent theories can't even prove their own consistency, and so on. In my view, our mind does not seem to compute things (though some, like Dennett and Putnam, would disagree).
The claim that our mind computes things is a pretty strong one (and if correct, I think we'd all probably be much better at math). Penrose argues that whatever the mind does, it's (at least in part) a fundamentally unsound operation; this to me sounds way more correct than the idea that our mind operates algorithmically.
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Nope I'm not. Every aspect of your experience is your nervous system and the sensory organs at work. The "Why is red RED?" thing is a complete joke from a scientific standpoint.
Yes, you are. > Every aspect of your experience is your nervous system and the sensory organs at work There's still a leap from that to the existence of subjective experience.
BUT, we are SO similar genetically that there is SHARED properties to nearly all experiences among ALL humans, strongly arguing for objectivity to it.
Why is red specifically what we perceive as red is not answerable. How it affects you cognitively and emotionally is based on the entirety of your upbringing and past experiences as well as your sense neurology. Our brain has quite a lot of neurons and connections! Trillions of connections and billions of neurons! A lot can change and be affected in innumerably complex ways! It's more than sufficient to explain the entirety of our subjective experience.
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A phenomena can be defined by a pattern, even if it’s not well defined in a technical sense. And a pattern is a thing. Consciousness is an everyday experience that appears to be reliably shared by billions of entities who communicate about it to each other. And have done so for at least millennia. To use a colloquialism: It’s a thing
There are types without values. That the type is itself a value does not mean that it has values itself. False is a type with no values. Consciousness is not a value. Replace type with concept and value with thing, and we get a rebuttal using the same language. You can also switch the terms, depending on how 'a thing' is interpreted. If you are more familiar with set theory, replace type with proposition, value with…
The most fundamental aspects of reality, and mathematics, are still not founded completely on formal definitions, without resorting to circular reasoning, and attempts to prove things assuming the things that are being proved.
Existence isn't well defined. Yet Descartes' famous informal claim "I think, therefore I am" is still a compelling statement that each of us can use to verify we do exist. Despite many unanswered questions.
Likewise, "I am aware of myself, my own thoughts, my interactions with a world around me" is a compelling statement supporting consciousness. The fact that we can all verify our own consciousness the same way, and discuss those experiences with each other, makes it even more compelling.
Despite lots of unanswered questions.
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Your counter examples are also weak. Most subjective beliefs about hearts having consciousness are not nearly as credible as informal arguments for existence and consciousness.
Conscious hearts are not virtually universally experienced.
Informal reasoning about why a heart, a blood pumping organ, would correlate with consciousness are not generally accepted informal arguments.
People whose hearts are replaced with artificial or donated organs don't reliably report a loss of consciousness.
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A phenomena can be defined by a pattern, even if it’s not well defined in a technical sense. And a pattern is a thing. Consciousness is an everyday experience that appears to be reliably shared by billions of entities who communicate about it to each other. And have done so for at least millennia. To use a colloquialism: It’s a thing
By your standards, a "soul" is also a "thing" which science struggles to explain, right?
Just because someone believes something, doesn't mean there is a compelling argument it exists.
But if something can be studied by many independent people, with strong agreement not based on passed-on beliefs, then there is likely to be something there.
I.e. I am unaware of a universal experience of souls, or informal arguments for souls that are compelling.
I am aware of informal arguments for existence ("I am, therefore I exist") and consciousness ("I experience myself, my own thinking, even this thought itself, so I am conscious of myself"). In both cases, the vast (vast, vast) majority of humans conclude they do exist and are conscious. And the informal reasoning is very strong, even informally tautological.
Soul's don't have that kind of support.
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Psychedelics, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, meditation and other techniques are reasonably valid examples of leaving I'd say. We don't really study them them to the degree that we could, but perhaps some day we will.
Psychedelics, meditation and mental illness show you or change the contents of the house - but you can never leave the house of the existence of consciousness. The closest thing we have to that would be death, and even then you only know if consciousness disappears if you die. In fact, you would not even experience the disappearance of consciousness - because the consciousness that would experience this has disappear…
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>I would posit that it is clear. It's simply a whole bunch of toasters put together (that is, a long list of if-then statements). If you're trying to argue that consciousness is merely a bunch of if-then statements, then yes, ChatGPT might be conscious. But then it's going to be much harder to argue that a toaster isn't conscious, which I thought we both agreed with. The combination of multitudes of if-else statement…
> The combination of multitudes of if-else statements forms a macro structure. It is this emergent macro structure that we call consciousness. As stated before the exact interconnect of this macro structure can't be fully articulated yet. It can be, and it's called the theory of computation. It's been extensively studied for the past century and a half, and, all-in-all, it's not even particularly strong. For example,…
It's the most likely outcome given what we know of the physical world.
> Godel showed that consistent theories can't even prove their own consistency, and so on.
Godel showed a flaw within logic itself. But it's all we got. If you're operating outside of logic then we don't have a consistent logical framework to use for generating conclusions. Without this, like I said, the conversation is pretty much over. There is nothing left to say.
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We observe everything indirectly. It is easy (and cognitively useful) to forget that, when the indirection is very reliable. As far as consciousness, we won’t just have to speculate based on our own consciousness. As artificial minds become highly self-aware (a functional ingredient of consciousness), we will be able to construct very controlled experiments. There will be endless numbers of experiments we will be abl…
True, but those experiments are inevitably restricted to the aspects of consciousness available for indirect observation and comparison. There is no way to distinguish between an unconscious machine mimicking the functional aspects of consciousness we are able to indirectly observe and compare to our own experience and something having the same experience. We could easily (and I think almost definitely are given the…
As noted before, all observations are indirect. That has not been the unique challenge for studying consciousness.
The unique challenge has been an inability to create constructive or destructive experiments.
We didn't know how to construct consciousness candidates or precursors, of varying kinds to study. We are getting close to that (i.e. self-awareness as a functional quality is certainly a precursor.)
And we have not been able to create controlled demolition of an consciousness candidates, due to the morals of human experiments. (But our artificial minds will be alterable and destructible at will, to test hypothesis.)
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By your standards, a "soul" is also a "thing" which science struggles to explain, right?
Informal reasoning doesn't mean subjective reasoning. Just because someone believes something, doesn't mean there is a compelling argument it exists. But if something can be studied by many independent people, with strong agreement not based on passed-on beliefs, then there is likely to be something there. I.e. I am unaware of a universal experience of souls, or informal arguments for souls that are compelling. I am…
However, I find bringing the concept of "soul" into the equation to be helpful, because many people intuitively believe in such things. If you ask them if souls are important, they'll say yes. If you ask them if something special happens to souls after death, they might say yes. But ask them to define what they mean when they say "soul", and you'll get a ton of hand-waving. People can believe very strongly in things they can't even describe or point to: this always puzzles me, because it shows that people don't even know what it is they believe in in the first place.
Whether the concept of "consciousness" is as ridiculous as the concept of a "soul" or not, I have found that they both suffer from the same definition problem.
There are many, many concepts which throughout History entire societies have shared a belief in, but which didn't map to real things that could be defined precisely. A "soul" is one of those, but other examples abound in the History of science and in the History of medicine.