Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#211

Post by gaganyaan » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 4:41 AM UTC

BasedAnon wrote: post #164

orwin wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Or rather what do you mean? We are able to track down and physically explain (thanks to MRI) the sentation, the objective part of consciousness (Chalmers's 'easy problems of consciousness'). That really exist and we can prove it (or we have an idea about experiments to run to prove it) I suppose here you're talking about the subjective sentation, the phenomenal experience, the 'hard problem', and you reference th…

>We are able to track down and physically explain (thanks to MRI) the sentation, the objective part of consciousness (Chalmers's 'easy problems of consciousness'). That really exist and we can prove it (or we have an idea about experiments to run to prove it) What we prove is an evidence that is filtered through our sensory faculties and experienced by our minds. Our minds still remain judge, jury and executioner and…

I don't really buy your argument about what's more real. If I was watching TV and a character punched the screen and I got a bloody nose from it, that's pretty real.

Similarly, if my mind experiences my body reaching out to take a drug and then my conciousness fractures, I think that's a sign that the experience is pretty damn real, regardless of whatever fragile concept of "consciousness" is floating in that reality.

If "you" are unable to sense the real world because you're unconscious, that doesn't mean your body isn't cogitating, it just means that the individual parts haven't come together to construct the illusion that is "you". Parts of your nervous system continue to work, though.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#212

Post by suggestion » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 5:07 AM UTC

jemmyw wrote: post #208

suggestion wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make any sense. If that's the case, the physical change should precede the changes in thought patterns. Also, physicalism is about as empirical as falling in love. It's far from definitive, proven, fact. There's no chemical emission that can force someone to have an exact thought, dream, or inner dialogue.

There are always physical changes happening. External stimuli, and time based internal changes. > If that's the case, the physical change should precede the changes in thought patterns. Not precede, are. These aren't separate things. > There's no chemical emission that can force someone to have an exact thought, dream, or inner dialogue. How do you know that to be the case? It seems likely to me that an exact set of…

If it seems likely to you, then you're not as much of an empiricist as you claim

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#213

Post by tsimionescu » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 5:19 AM UTC

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #203

tsimionescu wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Roger Penrose, despite his extraordinary career and contributions to science, has more recently been engaging more in this type of pseudoscience. It can and has happened to other extraordinary minds as well - Linus Pauling, one of the forefathers of quantum chemistry and molecular biology, but also a promoter of vitamin C as a panacea in his later years.

> pseudoscience Repeatedly calling something pseudoscience doesn't make it so.

GP asked whether we are calling what Roger Penrose is doing pseudoscience, and I responded that we do.

Now, why is it pseudoscience?

Because the parts of the theory due to Penrose are essentially philosophical, he doesn't really make any firm claims beyond "quantum effects - particularly superposition - are involved in human decision-making". The parts that Hameroff brings to the table are specific, but fanciful. The whole "microtubules observe quantum effects" is about as plausible as cold fusion - it is motivated thinking that contradicts some basic limits that we have observed, and relies on some gaps in our physical knowledge to not quite be provably wrong.

Overall they are combining musings about the universe with bits of biology and QM that are not yet fully understood into a theory that uses the trappings of science, but relies on motivated thinking to have any plausibility. It's most similar to the homeopathic quacks' claims about the memory of water: not fully proven to be impossible, but moatly on account of the vagueness of the claims. So, what they are doing fits the definition of pseudoscience.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#214

Post by tsimionescu » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 5:35 AM UTC

jemmyw wrote: post #195

BasedAnon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that you do not experience ghosts, but you do experience conciousness. >If consciousness was not physical then where is it? We can invert this and ask, if physicality is not ideal, then how do we come to know it? >Surely there's only two options: the physics we know and the physics we don't know? The third option is that physics is unable to interrogate itself.

> We can invert this and ask, if physicality is not ideal, then how do we come to know it? Why would we ask that? Not ideal for what? It just is. > The third option is that physics is unable to interrogate itself. This is likely true. We are the product of physics and we can only delve so deep. It might be that we cannot see to the most fundamental level(s). That's not a third option though, that's just the state of…

> Why would we ask that? Not ideal for what? It just is.

I'm pretty sure GP was using "ideal" in the sense of "made up of ideas", as in the philosophical concept of idealism, which is essentially the opposite of materialism: idealism is the position that the real world is that of the mind, and physics and the physical world is an emergent property of our minds, not the other way around.

Not that I think this is a real coherent position worth discussing.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#215

Post by tsimionescu » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 5:43 AM UTC

suggestion wrote: post #204

jemmyw wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internal feedback loops. Activity from the existing structure further modifies that structure. That activity is that thoughts are. So sure but it's all physical.

That doesn't make any sense. If that's the case, the physical change should precede the changes in thought patterns. Also, physicalism is about as empirical as falling in love. It's far from definitive, proven, fact. There's no chemical emission that can force someone to have an exact thought, dream, or inner dialogue.

Think about it like in the case of computers. The claim we are making is that our thoughts are essentially the same kind of things as the states that arise in a piece of software. And we already know that there exists today computer software which can be asked to modify itself through its own APIs.

Basically the way we view this is that CBT works kind of similarly to using the JVM APIs to modify some pieces of the running Java program to try to fix a bug. In this analogy, Psychiatric medicine would then be more like directly modifying the bits in RAM that represent a certain piece of executable code. They are both physical modifications ultimately, just working at different levels of abstraction.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#216

Post by tsimionescu » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 5:55 AM UTC

mindok wrote: post #150

some_furry wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a philosopher. I did study physics in college. I do not see it necessary for consciousness to be as fundamental as electroweak interactions and so on. In my mind, it's perfectly possible for consciousness to be an emergent property of a complex system that itself is not conscious in any meaningful way. Look at other examples of this; i.e. tensegrity. To conclude that consciousness is as fundamental as bosons…

How can you conceive of bosons or gravity without consciousness? How can you possibly prove objective reality through the filter of subjective consciousness?

This argument leads to solipsism, so it's not very fruitful. That is, you can easily replace "bosons or gravity" with "everything in the universe except myself, including other humans" and your argument doesn't change.

But then you actually can't say anything about anything, since you're the only thing that really exists and everything else is a just a figment of your mind.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#217

Post by tsimionescu » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 6:08 AM UTC

2snakes wrote: post #171

some_furry wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter how I conceive of anything. They existed for billions of years before I came around. Even if, like, I take a solipsistic approach to life, objective reality has a sort of object permanence to it that's more stable than e.g. my dreams. So even if everything is a hallucination, the mechanism for preserving the information is the closest to "real" I can identify. And from studying the things we call re…

Just consider that everything you come in contact with, including the assertion of the sense-data that led you to the conclusion of "billions of years", is contaminated by the fact that is utterly impossible to disprove consciousness. Everything else that comes in through the senses can be doubted, but consciousness is the only thing you are in direct contact with. But I agree partially with you that there may be a f…

> Everything else that comes in through the senses can be doubted, but consciousness is the only thing you are in direct contact with.

Every functioning human learns relatively early in life that certain experiences they have are simply fake - dreams, at the very least. Many people who suffer from hallucinations can also learn to trust that their own internal experiences are less valid than what others tell them is true.

Just as much, we may one day come to learn that our internal experience of consciousness is an illusion and that reality is we are all p-zombies. Of course, a physical theory of consciousness has to explain why and how we have this false subjective experience, but it's certainly conceivable that this might happen one day.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#218

Post by tsimionescu » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 6:12 AM UTC

nico wrote: post #189

some_furry wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter how I conceive of anything. They existed for billions of years before I came around. Even if, like, I take a solipsistic approach to life, objective reality has a sort of object permanence to it that's more stable than e.g. my dreams. So even if everything is a hallucination, the mechanism for preserving the information is the closest to "real" I can identify. And from studying the things we call re…

> They existed for billions of years before I came around. And how did you come to learn this? Through your consciousness Everything that you can know or experience is mediated through your consciousness Anything you believe to be objective truth or reality, you came to believe through consciousness There is no way for you (or anyone else for that matter), to know if anything really exists outside our own consciousne…

While you are right in some sense, your position is solipsistic, and solipsism is not considered a fruitful line of inquiry even in philosophy or religion. It is a conversation ender: there is nothing more to add to the conversation if I believe that I am the only thing that exists and there is no objective reality behind my consciousness. Even logic wouldn no longer be usable in arguments in this world view.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#219

Post by tsimionescu » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 6:15 AM UTC

some_furry wrote: post #192

nico wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They existed for billions of years before I came around. And how did you come to learn this? Through your consciousness Everything that you can know or experience is mediated through your consciousness Anything you believe to be objective truth or reality, you came to believe through consciousness There is no way for you (or anyone else for that matter), to know if anything really exists outside our own consciousne…

This makes for an interesting philosophy discussion, but is not a useful observation about physics.

Not even that. There is really nothing to discuss if the only thing I believed is that I exist, and anything else is potentially a hallucination. Even p ^ ¬p could be true, perhaps I'm just hallucinating the rule that says it isn't.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#220

Post by AllegedAlec » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 7:30 AM UTC

gchamonlive wrote: post #30

I have been imersing myself in this subject and the gist of what I got is that consciousness collapses under the reductionist process currently employed in the scientific method. Moreover, the very framework in which the current scientific work is done might well be just an emergent data structure used by what we understand as consciousness to navigate whatever the objective reality is in a way that is simpler and mo…

Jesus christ this is such pure pseudoscientific wankery.