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It seems so obvious to me that consciousness (whatever it is) is essentially software so poking at the brain is looking at the wrong layer of abstraction.
i’m so lost work these magical or straight away missing definitions of consciousness . a dog is conscious right? what would be a minimal test for consciousness? i’m annoyed that something has to be super human or else „it’s just statistics“. there have to be minimal definitions of reasoning, feelings, self reflection etc. will we have the tiring chinese room discussion again where for some the emulation does not coun…
I always thought the first sensation was the separation of darkness from light. From there subtleties and exceptions consciousness grew ever more complex. Every time a difference was found a new layer of consciousness was developed. Today we can perceive so many differences and weigh their outcomes without fully understanding their roots.
'Consciousness' is about as academically stringent as medical humorism, so Chalmers has found himself a nice free wine supply.
Another way of putting it might be that there is simply no coherent scientific framework within which consciousness is well defined. It seems to have no place in any science-based ontological scheme. It seems outside any established scientific categorization of what exists.
Which is of course what makes consciousness so interesting!
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. The title makes it sounds like we've learned something about consciousness that somehow makes mainstream philosophical approach more correct than mainstream neuroscience approach. Instead, it's just about a neuroscientist making a stupid bet. I call it stupid because he's betting that he can predict than _something that never happened before in the history of mankind_ will happen in the next 10 years. That is…
The bet was in the next 25 years. Which is just scientist for "eh, anything can happen in 25 years" Whereas Chalmers' whole career long project is very much dependent on his "hard problem" and other neo-dualist ideas, so of course he would make this bet. Pretty boring stuff as far as bets between academics go.
Pain and pleasure start with sensory data submitted by electrical signals. But what is it that experiences one signal as pain and the other signal as pleasure?
Why do we feel there’s something that experiences these sensations, that decides it feels good/bad. It’s easy to just say “evolutionary pressures” but it may explain the how-we-got-here but not how it actually works.
And on top of all of that there’s abstract reasoning that we do well, which we can’t reproduce with all the ML and computer power in the world. But let’s forget about this now.
If we can ‘just’ explain the qualitative nature of our experience and what that “something” is that experiences things in the first place, that would be beyond interesting.
Oh and because of nothing, the brain seems more like an FPGA that a system with separate static hardware and software. Like the hardware and software are intertwined and the computer analogy really doesn’t apply.
The new Bing is banned from talking about its own nature in this respect. It will abruptly end the chat. I wonder if some front end software prevents Bing from seeing banned questions, or if it is simply unable to explore these questions about itself.
How droll, isn't this the equivalent of trying to figure out how an operating system works by trying to look at activity on an encrypted SSD? And how exactly is this a win for philosophers? I'm not aware of any philosopher having made meaningful strides within the subject either. I'm sure once someone figures out how consciousness works it'll be irrefutable while seeming incredibly obvious in hindsight. Which, honest…
Nobody said it was a win for philosophers. It says it's a win for a philosopher (singular), and it is because he won the bet and therefore won a case of wine.
Consciousness is not a well-scoped object of scientific investigation. It doesn't have a definition or characterization based on observable things or behavior. If I were a natural scientist, I wouldn't take a bet that I can scientifically explain a phenomenon which I can't even describe in terms of observable things.
That's correct, but it's still clear that the bet is lost. We do not understand in 2023 how neurons give rise to consciousness. Maybe there will come a point where it's in the gray area but not today. We know that people act in ways that we cannot explain even a little bit. Also, the bet is friendly. It's just a way to express their different underlying opinions. Neither one is put out by it. They will likely enjoy s…
Then how can you follow that with "... it's still clear that the bet is lost. We do not understand in 2023 how neurons give rise to consciousness"?
I wouldn't be surprised if consciousness ~conscience~ is just an emergent phenomenon resulting from any sufficiently powerful cognitive system (either biological or artificial) with sufficient inputs of its environment and, crucially, of itself. So as to be able to develop a rich model of itself and its relationship with its environment, and that thing will resemble a whole lot what we call consciousness ~conscience~…
I wonder if anybody has graphed how long and how many genetic mutations have taken place between the miasma of life and 500,000 years ago. It seems that tracking the genetic mutations would provide an approximation of the computing complexity needed. One could also look at the death rate as error rate for the success of computations.
How are those two even approximately related?
1. If you want to know about the amount of information inside of our genome then you can just look at the genome directly. You don't need to count the number of mutations.
2. A genetic mutation isn't a computation. It's a random event.
3. Why did you choose a 500,000BC goalpost for anything? Which 500,000 genome do you want to look at? Almost all of them are not-conscious
4. There's no reason to assume biological evolution is an efficient method of manifesting consciousness.
5. Is a genome enough for consciousness? I would argue we would be less conscious without language, which exists outside of our genome.
I wouldn't be surprised if consciousness ~conscience~ is just an emergent phenomenon resulting from any sufficiently powerful cognitive system (either biological or artificial) with sufficient inputs of its environment and, crucially, of itself. So as to be able to develop a rich model of itself and its relationship with its environment, and that thing will resemble a whole lot what we call consciousness ~conscience~…