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It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

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Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#91

Post by trane_project »

thepasch wrote: post #86
trane_project wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't read minds. I know I have one and you know you have one. That's enough for both of us to know that mind is a real phenomenon. As for why any materialist explanations are unsatisfactory is that even if you managed to map every physical interaction in a sentient being, you are only mapping physical phenomena. Maybe that is enough to account for how that maps into the contents of the experience. I am not arguing…

> I can't read minds. I know I have one and you know you have one. That's enough for both of us to know that mind is a real phenomenon. So that's a religious argument, then. It's real because enough people believe that it is. > How is that generated from a set of aggregates that has no subjective experience of any kind? How can a pile of sand and rocks smushed together real close play back video? How can it produce a…

The only religious argument is materialism. It's real because enough people have convinced themselves that it's "scientific". Even though there is no proof whatsoever, no solid hypothesis, no experiments to prove how matter acquires subjective experience, it's incoherent to the very foundations of its position (that matter is dead), and has not made any progress in answering the "hard problem" (which is just someone pointing out the incoherence). It also makes people argue that they don't have a mind, that asserting they have a mind is a religious statement, or that they have some trouble understanding what a mind is.

> How can a pile of sand and rocks smushed together real close play back video? How can it produce a process that understands natural language?

The laws of physics are enough to explain this because no one is arguing that computers are experiencing anything when they play a video or generate a set of numbers that are displayed as natural language.

> At no point did I ever intend to argue any such thing. I suggest you put away the strawman and actually engage with what I'm saying.

Sorry, I phrased that badly by using "you" when I did not mean that. I meant to say that if someone (not you) wanted to argue that simple matter has some sort of experience, then at least the position would make some sense. But materialism assumes that simple matter does not have any subjective experience of any kind.

Anyway, I won't be able to convince you that you have a mind, so I'll peace out.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#92

Post by robwwilliams »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #80
zetalyrae wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For two reasons: 1. This requires explaining why only some kinds of information processing are privileged to be conscious, which seems rather arbitrary. 2. There's the question of levels of abstraction. Which information processor is conscious? The physical CPU, the zeroth VM, the first VM, the second VM, etc. 3. And there's the question of interpretation. What is computation? A CPU is "just" electrons moving about.…

Saying everything is conscious is also dualism. it's saying that every kind of computation (or perhaps every physical substrate) has another dimension of properties that aren't physical/structural and don't interact with the physical/structural world. So it's not an explanatory boon but rather an extravagance. The 'where is the consciousness' question is interesting but not really a hard problem. The issue can be sol…

Completely on the mark! Algorithms can differ qualitatively. Recursion.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#93

Post by k33n »

thepasch wrote: post #54
k33n wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s possible that you’re not conscious. So your subjective view may be correct for you. To those who are conscious, this argument doesn’t really matter, and the proof is simply in the pudding.

This is a religious argument. If you want to go down that path, then sure; but I suspect that's not what you actually believe.

It’s not a religious argument.

It’s a subjective experience argument. As a conscious person, if someone tells me they don’t believe in consciousness, then I’m inclined to believe they have a reason for saying that. They must not be experiencing consciousness the same way I am.

Interestingly, a non-trivial number of people have no internal monologue (https://www.iflscience.com/people-with-no-internal-monologue...). It would be reasonable to assume the experiential side of consciousness is on a spectrum, with extreme edge cases on both ends. It’s not unreasonable to assume that some people are barely experiencing it, and some not at all. It would certainly explain to me (someone who experiences it quite intensely) why some would claim it doesn’t exist. Because for them, it might not.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#94

Post by selcuka »

thepasch wrote: post #79
selcuka wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that you said "this spreadsheet and I", meaning that there is something particularly precious about the current "I". You don't think that you'd suddenly become the spreadsheet, "detaching" (can't find a better word) from your existing body. You intrinsicly assume that the spreadhseet would remain a third person from "your" perspective, even though it's a perfect replica.

I don't follow? I can copy a file and then consider the two files to be separate copies of the same data ? What should I have said instead? "We"? "Him and it"? Self-modeling is part of my experience. I'm sure it'll be part of the spreadsheet's experience as well, if it functions identically to me. I don't see the gotcha at all?

I believe it's a concept that is hard to explain. This other comment of mine may be a bit clearer:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48175605

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#95

Post by unparagoned »

zetalyrae wrote: post #11

The first point (analogizing the hard problem to the reaction to Darwinism) is a very common rhetorical move: an analogy and history of ideas, which is convincing to many people, but what does it prove? > A philosophical zombie would claim to know what subjective experience is; otherwise, it would be empirically distinguishable from a human. Chalmers’s point is that the existence of the hypothetical, irreducible cons…

I think you are misunderstanding illusionism and the hard problem.

Illusionism does say that there is a conscious experience. So illusionism is convincing to many people who have conscious experiences.

The alien would be able to look at the computation and describe the conscious experience it has.

You could put human consciousness on an excel spreadsheet and it’ll still be conscious. Even Chalmers accepts a simulation would be conscious. So no that’s not a. Argument for p-zombies. Even people that use the pz argument don’t think that pz could actually exist.

But your conclusion is right, the simulation example does suggest that the consciousness in the hard problem doesn’t exist. Which just leaves the consciousness you experience explainable by easy problems. Which is the illusionist position.

Edit: and the hard problem isn’t just why there is consciousness. But why consciousness is impossible under physicalism. So in your post you are just actually referring to the easy problem of consciousness when suggesting it exists.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#96

Post by aoeusnth1 »

selcuka wrote: post #49
solveiga wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this hard problem has a simple answer that people just don’t like: consciousness is a powerful (and fundamental to our "calculator brain") illusion. And yes, a spreadsheet simulating every neuron in your brain would also simulate it. The fact that it’s difficult to conceptualize doesn’t mean it’s not the answer. Similar to how we struggle to intuit general relativity, or to imagine the pre–Big Bang state of t…

I believe your explanation answers the easy question, not the hard one. It explains how organisms evolve to be smarter to survive, but doesn't explain why or how the first person perspective exists. It's actually a different question (sometimes called "the even harder question" or "the vertiginous question"), but if you have ever asked yourself the question of "why am I me and not someone else", the gap in our unders…

There is nothing which makes either of them are “you.” The feeling of Self is a useful predictor which a physical subsystem uses to nagivate the world and predict observations. “I” is not a physically real label which attaches the “you”-ness to physical systems, the physical systems simply are, and are inherently first-person in character. The only real you is the global quantum wave function, or whatever the underlying real stuff is doing.

Materialism directly implies no-self and Advaita Vedanta schools of thought.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#97

Post by aoeusnth1 »

nofriend wrote: post #34
solveiga wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this hard problem has a simple answer that people just don’t like: consciousness is a powerful (and fundamental to our "calculator brain") illusion. And yes, a spreadsheet simulating every neuron in your brain would also simulate it. The fact that it’s difficult to conceptualize doesn’t mean it’s not the answer. Similar to how we struggle to intuit general relativity, or to imagine the pre–Big Bang state of t…

> I think this hard problem has a simple answer that people just don’t like: consciousness is a powerful (and fundamental to our "calculator brain") illusion. who is eluded? people absolutely love this answer and give it constantly, not realizing that it's begging the question. in order for their to be an illusion, there needs to be someone to perceive the illusion.

The universe contains subsystems which can be described as eluded in the sense that we can take the intentional stance on these systems and describe their observable behavior as being in a state of illusion of separation.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#98

Post by suzzer99 »

thepasch wrote: post #37
zetalyrae wrote: post #11

The first point (analogizing the hard problem to the reaction to Darwinism) is a very common rhetorical move: an analogy and history of ideas, which is convincing to many people, but what does it prove? > A philosophical zombie would claim to know what subjective experience is; otherwise, it would be empirically distinguishable from a human. Chalmers’s point is that the existence of the hypothetical, irreducible cons…

> Either all the computation happens "in the dark", as in a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet or a slide rule or Factorio, in which case we are p-zombies and consciousness is an illusion, which contradicts every waking moment of our experience You are still presupposing the premise here, in multiple ways: 1) "My experience is that I'm conscious, and math cannot result in consciousness, therefore consciousness is a s…

Here's my question: Is our consciousness fundamentally different than a gorilla's?

If the answer is no, then I'd ask if a gorilla's consciousness is fundamentally different than a baboon's? I think that answer has to be no by definition, assuming the first answer is no.

And so on, until we get to where a human's consciousness is not fundamentally different than a tube worm, just a continuum of degrees.

I'm not sure what to draw from this. But whenever I read something that speculates on the nature of consciousness, I always try to look at it through the lens of the human-to-tube worm scale. Does the argument survive a continuum, or does it depend on human consciousness being fundamentally unique in some way?

I guess you could argue that even though there's a continuum, consciousness effectively hits zero somewhere around reptiles. Sort of like how technically I feel Alpha Centauri's gravity, but effectively it's zero. So in that case, the argument only has to survive mammals to say corvids.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#99

Post by GoblinSlayer »

zetalyrae wrote: post #42
solveiga wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this hard problem has a simple answer that people just don’t like: consciousness is a powerful (and fundamental to our "calculator brain") illusion. And yes, a spreadsheet simulating every neuron in your brain would also simulate it. The fact that it’s difficult to conceptualize doesn’t mean it’s not the answer. Similar to how we struggle to intuit general relativity, or to imagine the pre–Big Bang state of t…

> And yes, a spreadsheet simulating every neuron in your brain would also simulate it. But why a spreadsheet simulating the brain, and not just a spreadsheet doing normal financial math? In other words: why are some types of information processing "privileged" to create phenomenal experiences, while others run "in the dark"? > Also, the emergence of a consciousness like illusion kinda follows from an evolutionary per…

Because it's information processing that implements perception.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#100

Post by __patchbit__ »

suzzer99 wrote: post #98
thepasch wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either all the computation happens "in the dark", as in a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet or a slide rule or Factorio, in which case we are p-zombies and consciousness is an illusion, which contradicts every waking moment of our experience You are still presupposing the premise here, in multiple ways: 1) "My experience is that I'm conscious, and math cannot result in consciousness, therefore consciousness is a s…

Here's my question: Is our consciousness fundamentally different than a gorilla's? If the answer is no, then I'd ask if a gorilla's consciousness is fundamentally different than a baboon's? I think that answer has to be no by definition, assuming the first answer is no. And so on, until we get to where a human's consciousness is not fundamentally different than a tube worm, just a continuum of degrees. I'm not sure w…

Some scientists accept consciousness resides in single cell paramecia.
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