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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

#231

Post by roncesvalles »

H8crilA wrote: post #191
jwilliams wrote: post #111

Rovelli is arguing (I think) that we need to fundamentally view consciousness as a natural phenomenon - albeit one that is extremely complex and poorly understood. So we ditch the philosophical puzzle and focus on the reality we can perceive and reason on. The problem is that consciousness is a philosophical invention (and a slippery one at that). We're in the wrong frame. If you accept consciousness is a thing you e…

I am pretty sure I am not conscious, and this seems to solve the entire problem that other people have.

My pet theory is that I don't think all humans are conscious (in other words, some perfectly cognitively normal-seeming people are just automatons without an inner experience, like plants or LLMs). Mainly motivated by the fact that a lot of people report not having an inner monologue, and other little hints that I've picked up over the years.

The "inner experience" might be totally optional to fitness, like green eyes.

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

#232

Post by hackinthebochs »

mort96 wrote: post #143
aledevv wrote: post #139

> ..idea anticipated centuries ago by the philosopher Baruch Spinoza: that our Soul could be a phenomenon of the same basic nature as any other phenomenon in nature. Even the current Artificial Intelligence revolution is showing us that: what was thought to be purely immaterial and intangible, that is, human abstract Reasoning and Thoughts, are actually tangible, physical, and even machine-reproducible .

Was reasoning thought to be immaterial and intangible..? By whom? Materialism has been alive and well for a long time from what I can tell

Plato, for example

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

#233

Post by XorNot »

bambax wrote: post #204
jwilliams wrote: post #111

Rovelli is arguing (I think) that we need to fundamentally view consciousness as a natural phenomenon - albeit one that is extremely complex and poorly understood. So we ditch the philosophical puzzle and focus on the reality we can perceive and reason on. The problem is that consciousness is a philosophical invention (and a slippery one at that). We're in the wrong frame. If you accept consciousness is a thing you e…

I never quite understood what we mean by "consciousness" but I find fascinating that most modern philosophers who describe themselves as materialists / non religious can argue in the same sentence that there is something special and extra-natural about the human experience. It's one or the other: either nature is all there is, and therefore, consciousness is a purely natural phenomenon, that we can investigate, and p…

"might as well call God" is a bizzare conclusion for the latter though because "God" is far from an abstract concept - it's probably one of the most heavily loaded terms in every human culture.

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

#234

Post by energy123 »

mikk14 wrote: post #230
energy123 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Most philosophers are materialists or computational functionalists, while being monists. This means they aren't dualists, and it means they do not adopt the supernatural explanation. But they are careful not to rule out dualism. There's this pattern I've observed in discussions about philosophy. First there's a rejectio…

I don't know if this is discussed by actual serious philosophers, but consider the issue of "mind uploading." I have seen very staunch monists seriously discussing that, if you were to produce a complete digital copy of your brain -- copying any possible information to the most minute synapse -- then you effectively "uploaded" yourself into a computer and can live a digital life. These people believe this while at th…

But you are taking an opinionated view of the resolution to the Ship of Theseus paradox. If you are a computational functionalist, then it really is "you" afterwards (or rather there's now two identical "you" until the original "you" is destroyed). A monist could also point to your hypocrisy of believing that you are still your child self despite every atom in your body having been replaced between then and now.

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

#235

Post by cortic »

adwn wrote: post #223
bambax wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never quite understood what we mean by "consciousness" but I find fascinating that most modern philosophers who describe themselves as materialists / non religious can argue in the same sentence that there is something special and extra-natural about the human experience. It's one or the other: either nature is all there is, and therefore, consciousness is a purely natural phenomenon, that we can investigate, and p…

No, there is at least one other option, which is that consciousness [1] is a phenomenon that we can't replicate in non-biological brains [2], but from which the existence of a "God"-like being, as the term is understood by major religions, still doesn't follow. [1] Or "qualia", to be precise. [2] For example, the existence of qualia might require certain carbon-based structures which aren't present in silicon-based d…

There is nothing that we know of in carbon based structures that violates universal causality, even in quantum scales where causality becomes more vague it is replaced by a measurable randomness.

So there should be no reason we cannot reduce these phenomena to actual quantifiable and there for Computable elements.

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

#236

Post by card_zero »

mikk14 wrote: post #230
energy123 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Most philosophers are materialists or computational functionalists, while being monists. This means they aren't dualists, and it means they do not adopt the supernatural explanation. But they are careful not to rule out dualism. There's this pattern I've observed in discussions about philosophy. First there's a rejectio…

I don't know if this is discussed by actual serious philosophers, but consider the issue of "mind uploading." I have seen very staunch monists seriously discussing that, if you were to produce a complete digital copy of your brain -- copying any possible information to the most minute synapse -- then you effectively "uploaded" yourself into a computer and can live a digital life. These people believe this while at th…

I think reasonably faithful clones would be mes. We could live my life, from multiple perspectives, some of them quite separate. It might be necessary to distinguish them with numbers, or claim that one of them has become too different to really count as a me, but those are details and semantic matters.

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

#237

Post by dainank »

I believe nature is all there is. If we could replicate a human brain several times, and make each 'human brain' receive the exact same input data (sounds, sights, smells e.t.c.) from the moment they 'exist' until the end of their lifetime, I truly think that each of these brains will make precisely the same decisions (and each of these 'brains' would think they were conscious and in control of their lives).

In my eyes, consciousness is simply a natural phenomenon that can be explained but we just lack the understanding at this moment. Time and time again we have made this mistake of assuming there is something supernatural about the things we cannot comprehend and only a few centuries later it is completely understood scientifically. I think consciousness will be a similar case but will take more time.

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

#238

Post by pygy_ »

FTA:

> Then he declared that there is another distinct problem — why the brain’s behavior is accompanied by experience at all — which he christened the “hard” problem of consciousness.

The hard problem isn't about "why", it's about "what it's like".

Try to explain what it's like to hear a major and a chord to a deaf person, or what it's like to see magenta to someone who's blind.

None of the things you say, sign or write will make them experience these sensations.

Ultimately no one but you can know what it's like to be you.

This doesn't mean that subjective experience can't be modeled. but the caveats that apply to models in general are relevant here too: none are correct, some are useful.

Dualism doesn't necessarily means that subjectivity is ineffable. Mind and matter could work like mathematical duals: platonic solids (cube vs octahedron, dodecahedron vs icosahedron, tetrahedron vs itself), Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay triangulations, etc... These are intimately linked, and you can generate one from the other and inversely, yet they have their own distinct properties.

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

#239

Post by jillesvangurp »

Neal Stephenson touches on this topic in several of his novels. Probably the most concrete of this is "Fall; or Dodge in Hell" which involves a simulation of people's scanned brains rediscovering qualia and constructing their own simulated world from scratch. In the book, two of the deceased digital "souls" eventually mate and produce digital offspring and the whole simulation starts consuming more and more resources.

His Baroque Cycle series also touches on this in several places. One funny side plot involves a freed African slave (Dappa) who speaks dozens of different languages and is highly intelligent and an aristocratic person who maintains that of course this former slave (who is obviously a lot smarter than this aristocrat) is just a trained monkey that naturally is not conscious even though he is quite clever with language. The same books also have a lot of side plots involving Leibniz and various attempts to build thinking/computing machines.

The Dappa plot is probably the closest to a lot of debates there will be around AGI with people likely to insist for all sorts of reasons rooted in philosophy, religion, etc. that even though the AGI walks, talks, etc. like a duck, it can't be a duck. At some point, we'll have AGI that pass any test we can think of and we'll still have people arguing that these cannot be conscious.

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

#240

Post by vkou »

RealityVoid wrote: post #156
barrkel wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't really consciousness, it's qualia. Specifically, pain and suffering. If we create a machine that is able to print on the terminal 'I feel pain', how do we know when to believe the machine is feeling pain? This isn't enough: echo "I feel pain" Is a very complicated set of matrix multiplications enough?

Qualia is tied to the nature of existence. If you... let's say... make a humanoid robot with replaceable limbs, and you magically imbue it with AGI abilities, the qualia of losing a hand will be very different than a biological entity. It can always just swap the arm. Temporary loss of autonomy might still be distressing, but impressing our own perception of experience on a being that fundamentally lives in a differe…

What about if the robot's RNG is seeded with a particular number, that we did not write down... And we can destroy it's memory hardware containing the seed, 'killing' it.

Even if the memory hardware is replaced, it won't be the 'same' individual, no? Would an aversion to 'death' be rational in it?

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