41–50 of 377 posts
> Most researchers agree that consciousness is somehow related to the electrical activity of brains. Some go further and propose that brains’ electromagnetic fields actually are conscious. I am not knowledgeable at all here so I'm just going to talk out of my butt for a second but this seems testable. Does disrupting the electromagnetic fields in the brain disrupt consciousness?
Absolutely, yes.
I think that's enough hacker news for today.
Every major consciousness theory out there fails because it does not account for how a consciously experiencing self is created. You cannot explain away consciousness without explaining the self.
And there is a theory that offers a model for both (not my own!). Our book Journey of the Mind discusses this. Here's a blog post discussing both https://saigaddam.medium.com/conscious-is-simple-and-ai-can-...
Apologies if this is a dumb question or a taboo question or both, but what the does “conscious” mean? We know about lots of complex systems, and systems that exhibit “emergent” behaviors seeming much more complex and goal-directed than the components of the system (the glider gun, that thing with the computer-modeled birds with like 3 simple rules but then the whole flock does complicated, creative stuff, long list).…
Maybe just overcomplicating things.
Being 'conscious' really just means being sentient, having some sort of awareness and ability to sense and react to things.
Then there is having a 'consciousness', which is more than just being conscious and generally refers to having some degree of self-awareness.
Your macbook doesn't fit into either of these categories, and certainly isn't conscious. Nor is fire, or a virus.
Apologies if this is a dumb question or a taboo question or both, but what the does “conscious” mean? We know about lots of complex systems, and systems that exhibit “emergent” behaviors seeming much more complex and goal-directed than the components of the system (the glider gun, that thing with the computer-modeled birds with like 3 simple rules but then the whole flock does complicated, creative stuff, long list).…
What you are dealing with here is in actuality a language problem. You are contemplating and asking about the intricacies of a specific vocabulary word. It is an arbitrary sounding word with a simply arbitrarily vague definition surrounding it. Who cares? This is a linguistic problem not a philosophy problem.
You think you're asking about something metaphysical or philosophical? No. It is a language quirk that's actually a trap. When you debate with someone about what is "consciousness" you have fallen into this trap. You believe you're discussing something profound, but no. What you are doing is debating about some arbitrary definition of some arbitrary word. When it goes into the details it's all about delineating what group of traits is conscious and what group of traits isn't conscious and this is not at all interesting.
I think in reality this concept doesn't exist. We think it exists because the word exists. When you read this sentence you really need to think deeply about what I'm saying here. A lot of people miss it when I say the concept doesn't exist without the word. In fact, the word is so ingrained with their psyche they can't differentiate the two.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Because I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone call a virus conscious Panpsychism posits that all matter is conscious, and perhaps consciousness is more fundamental than matter. I don't find it particularly persuasive, but it's a real philosophical position: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/
Panpsychist here, much of the time at least. It sort of sneaked up on me. It was initially a physics inquiry. I was playing with the idea that there is not "the" arrow of time, but instead "my" arrow of time, something arising from my biochemistry maybe. Under this lens, the obvious candidates for consciousness are the ones whose arrows of time are all pointing in the same direction--because I can communicate with th…
> Under this lens, the obvious candidates for consciousness are the ones whose arrows of time are all pointing in the same direction--because I can communicate with them (this is why most humans believe that humans are conscious).
None of this follows for me. If a being has its own arrow of time surely it would be based on decisions it would make, and conscious beings would not all have their time arrows pointed in the same direction simply because they were conscious.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've hit on the root of the debate, but you might have missed it. The debate is to define the meaning of consciousness. We've got a general problem of not knowing what consciousness is, if it actually exists, how many people have it, if it is exclusive to humans and not really having a good philosophical grounding for (assuming multiple separate consciousnesses could exist) whether in practice that is the case of i…
Is there some particular reason why this debate isn’t squarely in the spiritual/religious/personal/subjective building on campus and zero in the science building? I mean, these are all fascinating questions in a “let’s smoke a joint and talk about the meaning of life” sense, I’ve had many such conversations (both with and without the joint) and enjoyed all of them that were of that tenor. And I can see there being a…
And the debate is primarily a philosophical debate, not a scientific debate, if that's what you're asking.
And I'm not sure that ethics is particularly more "scientific" than philosophy of mind. There's a case to be made that scientific study of pain is relevant to the morality of eating animals, yes, but there's also a case to be made that science is relevant to consciousness, e.g. the science related to IIT. And in both cases, the science is relevant but doesn't even come close to solving the issue.
Apologies if this is a dumb question or a taboo question or both, but what the does “conscious” mean? We know about lots of complex systems, and systems that exhibit “emergent” behaviors seeming much more complex and goal-directed than the components of the system (the glider gun, that thing with the computer-modeled birds with like 3 simple rules but then the whole flock does complicated, creative stuff, long list).…
> Consciousness is the constellation of your past experiences transforming reality into your next experience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've hit on the root of the debate, but you might have missed it. The debate is to define the meaning of consciousness. We've got a general problem of not knowing what consciousness is, if it actually exists, how many people have it, if it is exclusive to humans and not really having a good philosophical grounding for (assuming multiple separate consciousnesses could exist) whether in practice that is the case of i…
Is there some particular reason why this debate isn’t squarely in the spiritual/religious/personal/subjective building on campus and zero in the science building? I mean, these are all fascinating questions in a “let’s smoke a joint and talk about the meaning of life” sense, I’ve had many such conversations (both with and without the joint) and enjoyed all of them that were of that tenor. And I can see there being a…