Decades-long bet on consciousness ends • Hacker News Board

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#231

Post by geysersam » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 4:18 AM UTC

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…

> makes all the supposedly hard questions about consciousness very simple to answer.

I'm intrigued!

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#232

Post by geysersam » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 4:24 AM UTC

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…

But is that the point of the perspective?

My understanding is that they're asking the question: are the tools we apply to the task able to solve another related but much simpler task?

If the answer is no then we should probably take another look at our approach.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#233

Post by kuhewa » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 4:33 AM UTC

mananaysiempre wrote: post #186

quus wrote: post #178

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.

My philosophy professor had a multi-volume (non-English-language) textbook called “Introduction to the science of philosophy”, so, uh, I dunno. Claiming it’s complementary is also not benign—it brings along the burden of pointing out some holes in the scientific enterprise, a general conception of how to fill them, and at least some practical success in doing so. I don’t believe that to be impossible and have some th…

> My philosophy professor had a multi-volume (non-English-language) textbook called “Introduction to the science of philosophy”, so, uh, I dunno.

I too am not sure what you are implying there. The enterprise, assuming it had some merit, sounds like evidence of complementarity?

> it brings along the burden of pointing out some holes in the scientific enterprise, a general conception of how to fill them, and at least some practical success in doing so.

Well, yeah, all of those are a given. The rest of your comment goes more toward philosophers speculating on aspects of the material world (i.e. the realm of scientific inquiry), but there is a lot more to philosophy. The holes in the scientific enterprise have long been well delineated, which isn't a criticism, but for example we can't derive human values solely from science [1].

Also, philosophy underpins science. Whenever a hypothesis is tested, there is are philosophically-grounded assumptions being made. The epistemological implications for any given scientific finding depend on the underlying philosophical framework being assumed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#234

Post by goatlover » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 5:01 AM UTC

riwsky wrote: post #226

bananabiscuit wrote: post #219

Is it possible consciousness will not be ever explained by physical sciences because it is exactly outside of the domain of what science was invented to explain? Physical science takes on as axioms that the laws of physics are uniform everywhere and that there is no preferred observer. The experience of consciousness is exactly opposite to those two things. It very much is the consequence of you being a preferred obs…

“Given my chosen definition of consciousness as XYZ, is it possible that consciousness is XYZ?”

Alternatively, "Given my chosen definition of the world, I will define consciousness so that it is not XYZ".

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#235

Post by skybrian » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 5:03 AM UTC

kuhewa wrote: post #233

mananaysiempre wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My philosophy professor had a multi-volume (non-English-language) textbook called “Introduction to the science of philosophy”, so, uh, I dunno. Claiming it’s complementary is also not benign—it brings along the burden of pointing out some holes in the scientific enterprise, a general conception of how to fill them, and at least some practical success in doing so. I don’t believe that to be impossible and have some th…

> My philosophy professor had a multi-volume (non-English-language) textbook called “Introduction to the science of philosophy”, so, uh, I dunno. I too am not sure what you are implying there. The enterprise, assuming it had some merit, sounds like evidence of complementarity? > it brings along the burden of pointing out some holes in the scientific enterprise, a general conception of how to fill them, and at least s…

I'm not sure "underpins" is the right word here.

A theory of ants wouldn't "underpin" the behavior of ants. If the ants behave differently than the theory, then the theory is wrong and should be changed. The ant theory is something in the minds of outside observers, not the ants, and ant behavior doesn't rely on it. The dependency goes the other way: the observers modify their theory to better describe the ants. The ants would exist without the theory, but theory would be pointless if there were no ants.

Is a philosophy of science similar? Or does it have a practical effect on scientific work?

Unlike ants, scientists can learn a philosophy of science, and perhaps believe it. Does this affect their work?

One reason it might not affect their work in practice is that they didn't learn that particular philosophy. Also, perhaps different scientists might learn different philosophies without practical effect.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#236

Post by goatlover » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 5:05 AM UTC

fzaninotto wrote: post #182

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~…

Many neuroscientists think like you, see Attention Schema Theory [1], popularized by Michael Graziano at Princeton University. This is a form of Illusionism [2] - according to Graziano, consciousness is an illusion. I've explored this idea by building a chatbot with an inner monologue, Molly [3], based on GPT-3. The result is spectacular: it gives the illusion of consciousness. And, according to Information Schema Th…

What would it mean for the sensations of pain or color to be an illusion? Do you really think that you can be wrong about experiencing a colored-in world around you, or feeling pain when you kick a rock? If so, what gives you confidence that the world exists, given how wrong all you would be about your own experiences?

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#237

Post by goatlover » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 5:12 AM UTC

rvense wrote: post #71

tunnuz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we even have a sound definition of what consciousness is / looks like from the outside? How do we recognise it?

Consciousness, like intelligence and many others, is a prescientific term, and most debates about 'the nature of consciousness' (et al) are really just debates about the definition of the term.

It's not a definitional problem, otherwise Chalmers wouldn't have won the bet. Philosophers are very adept with concepts. The problem is experiential in nature. We experience a world of color, sound, tastes/smells, feels, emotions in perception, imagination, memory, dreaming, internal dialog, hallucination, illusion. But we describe the world in terms that are objective, functional and mathematical, not experiential. The sensations are abstracted away because they are creature-specific, and vary among individuals. The room feels cold to you, hot to me, and normal to a third person. But we can describe the molecular motion of air in the room, and measure the temperature, which is the same for all people and creatures.

As Thomas Nagel put it, science is the view from nowhere. There is nothing experiential about the physical understanding of the world. And yet we are part of that world.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#238

Post by jdietrich » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 5:21 AM UTC

kuhewa wrote: post #233

mananaysiempre wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My philosophy professor had a multi-volume (non-English-language) textbook called “Introduction to the science of philosophy”, so, uh, I dunno. Claiming it’s complementary is also not benign—it brings along the burden of pointing out some holes in the scientific enterprise, a general conception of how to fill them, and at least some practical success in doing so. I don’t believe that to be impossible and have some th…

> My philosophy professor had a multi-volume (non-English-language) textbook called “Introduction to the science of philosophy”, so, uh, I dunno. I too am not sure what you are implying there. The enterprise, assuming it had some merit, sounds like evidence of complementarity? > it brings along the burden of pointing out some holes in the scientific enterprise, a general conception of how to fill them, and at least s…

>Also, philosophy underpins science. Whenever a hypothesis is tested, there is are philosophically-grounded assumptions being made. The epistemological implications for any given scientific finding depend on the underlying philosophical framework being assumed.

P(A|B) = P(B|A)P(A)/P(B). To the extent that philosophy underpins science, it does so because scientists are bad at math.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#239

Post by goatlover » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 5:22 AM UTC

moritzwarhier wrote: post #183

> Consciousness is everything a person experiences — what they taste, hear, feel and more. It is what gives meaning and value to our lives, Chalmers says. > Despite a vast effort — and a 25-year bet — researchers still don’t understand how our brains produce it, however. “It started off as a very big philosophical mystery,” Chalmers adds. “But over the years, it’s gradually been transmuting into, if not a ‘scientific…

You can look the definition of qualia or phenomenal. There is a ton of philosophical discussion. But basically, it means the experiences of color, sound, etc. that humans have, and whatever additional kinds of sensations animals with different sensory organs (like sonar in bats) have. Which doesn't preclude other sorts of physical systems from being conscious, just depending on what you think results in conscious experiences.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#240

Post by jdietrich » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 5:29 AM UTC

interlinked wrote: post #140

willbudd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You jest, but that has a good likelihood of becoming the watershed moment. The moment AI is bootstrapped to the point where it surpasses human ability to advance the AI SOTA, it's pretty much game over—from a Darwinian point of view at least. And I have a hard time seeing any reason why that would be a matter of "if" rather than "when".

> it's pretty much game over Not if it takes the computational capacity of the entire world to simulate a brain with an iq of 65.

Why bother simulating a brain? GPT-4 scores 155 on the verbal section of the WAIS III.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/i-gave-chatgpt-an...