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Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

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Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#171

Post by detourdog »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #92
anotheryou wrote: post #12

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…

The whole debate over what is and isn't conscious is foolish, if you ask me. It's essentially a proxy for what does and does not deserve ethical consideration. In that regard our desire to exploit the universe around us without consideration will bias our reasoning considerably. The debate around ML models that you are referencing is illustrative of this. The much harder ethical quandary is how we should operate in a…

I don't equate consciousness with ethics in any way. I measure consciousness as the ability to accurately understand ones environment. Each level of accurate understanding is distinct.

Ethics is a whole other department.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#172

Post by civilitty »

fbdab103 wrote: post #164
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #70

See also: Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor? https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/file?id=10.13...

I really dislike these types of papers. "Pfft look at these neanderthals studying complex system X by observing surface properties and trying to make deep inferences! Nothing like us mighty computer spacemen!" A circuit is a highly systemic, regular design which can be precisely studied in isolation. It is not so easy to carve up a human brain, cell, or metabolic process so that one can study this thing hidden to the…

> It is not so easy to carve up a human brain, cell, or metabolic process so that one can study this thing hidden to the human eye.

It's basically impossible when studying biological systems. Can you imagine trying to understand human digestion in isolation from the gut microbiome? Even if you had perfect information about what the digestive system does, you'd still be completely missing half of the big picture.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#173

Post by kmod »

munch117 wrote: post #158
civilized wrote: post #14

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.

Definition: Consciousness is those parts of the workings of the brain that are available to introspection. End definition. People so love to throw all kinds of babble under the heading of consciousness, so there's scant chance that people will agree on any kind of definition, let alone this one. But it's what I've been using, and I find that it makes all the supposedly hard questions about consciousness very simple t…

`ps` is a way of introspecting about a computer "brain". Is that consciousness?

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#175

Post by Solvency »

civilitty wrote: post #172
fbdab103 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really dislike these types of papers. "Pfft look at these neanderthals studying complex system X by observing surface properties and trying to make deep inferences! Nothing like us mighty computer spacemen!" A circuit is a highly systemic, regular design which can be precisely studied in isolation. It is not so easy to carve up a human brain, cell, or metabolic process so that one can study this thing hidden to the…

> It is not so easy to carve up a human brain, cell, or metabolic process so that one can study this thing hidden to the human eye. It's basically impossible when studying biological systems. Can you imagine trying to understand human digestion in isolation from the gut microbiome? Even if you had perfect information about what the digestive system does, you'd still be completely missing half of the big picture.

Same goes for nearly all cellular processes. Metabolism is virtually impossible to define as a series of discrete elegant deterministic procedural steps and properties. Same goes for insulin, and all other hormones.

You can't even try to think of something like insulin as massive polynomial function where you might eventually understand all of the variables involved and how they affect said function. In fact the function could completely change at any time depending on other esoteric confounding factors in the body. It's absolutely insane.

In fact almost all biological functions in the body can be described as trillions of chemicals and chemical pathways interacting in infinitely complicated ways that just so happen to occasionally result in enough homeostasis to support the macroscopic survival of said organism because of a sloppy brute force evolutionary system that took centuries to unfold.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#176

Post by hungryforcodes »

munch117 wrote: post #158
civilized wrote: post #14

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.

Definition: Consciousness is those parts of the workings of the brain that are available to introspection. End definition. People so love to throw all kinds of babble under the heading of consciousness, so there's scant chance that people will agree on any kind of definition, let alone this one. But it's what I've been using, and I find that it makes all the supposedly hard questions about consciousness very simple t…

But this is a totally meaningless definition. It says nothing about the phenominalogical experience of consciousness in a meaningful way and contains nothing that is scientifically falsifiable.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#177

Post by quadcore »

pa7x1 wrote: post #7

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~…

Another theory of mine is that survival instincts is (or is part of or is strongly linked to) consciousness.

Take an AI for example, like say gpt4, and picture it being tought or being able of survival instincts. How would one differentiate such a beast from life?

I know it's imprecise at best but still, Id bet the key is there. Maybe the question should not be "what is consciousness?" but rather "what is survival instincts?".

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#178

Post by quus »

Im a grad student in philosophy, and this one unfortunately risks perpetuating the annoying myth that philosophers are somehow in competition with the natural sciences — usually believed by people who have literally never taken any courses in philosophy. Quine said that philosophical inquiry is continuous with empirical inquiry, but I think it’d be fine to say that it’s just complementary.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#179

Post by gfody »

kmod wrote: post #173
munch117 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definition: Consciousness is those parts of the workings of the brain that are available to introspection. End definition. People so love to throw all kinds of babble under the heading of consciousness, so there's scant chance that people will agree on any kind of definition, let alone this one. But it's what I've been using, and I find that it makes all the supposedly hard questions about consciousness very simple t…

`ps` is a way of introspecting about a computer "brain". Is that consciousness?

sort of. ambiguity is a nice feature of language. it wouldn't confuse anyone to say you were digging into your computer's consciousness.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#180

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

imtringued wrote: post #67
hnfong wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "hard" qualia question can potentially be answered by the emergence argument. The much more difficult part of "why do I have qualia" is not the qualia part, but why am "I" attached to this body's consciousness, as opposed to the billions of other candidates?

This isn't just relevant to other people. The question is also 'why does a human form a single consciousness?'. If consciousness emerges purely from information exchange in a complex system, then consciousness would be primarily driven by communication interactions between regions of the human brain and the rest of the body. This in turn means that there should be a way to merge or split consciousnesses. For example,…

> The question is also 'why does a human form a single consciousness?'.

It doesn't seem to. When dreaming, it's possible to carry out conversations with other "people" in the dream which are indistinguishable from conscious beings you meet when awake. There's usually a single "self" in dreams, but the brain certainly seems to form extra consciousnesses on demand which react as though they had a sense of "self".

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