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

noemamag.com

351–360 of 822 posts

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

#351

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…

> Question: who says math cannot result in consciousness? Which math? Why some kinds of information processing and not others? If all information processing leads to consciousness: why does consciousness stop at the boundary of the brain? Why isn't every neuron individually and separately conscious? Why not the two hemispheres of the brain? Why isn't every causally-linked volume of the universe a single mind? > Impli…

Can we start by defining consciousness as something that could be quantified physically, rather than a nebulous concept? With a common shared ground, we could at least define why we are all sure that individual neurons are unconscious.

To anticipate a possible question about my definition: I don’t have a strict one. I’m almost completely with Rovelli on this one. I think the day we find a proper definition of the concept we’ll have done the first step is solving the (one and only) “easy” problem of consciousness. But I’m open to hearing your own definition since I feel like I just can’t grasp your concerns. I must be missing something.

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

#352

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've been debating consciousness for many years as a layman, not an expert, but a layman who has read a lot of scholarly books on the subject.

In my experience, the majority of people who take the position that consciousness is something special to humans are nearly always coming from a religious background and viewing it through a religious lens. This makes sense, as if we reduce consciousness to physical reality, then the implications to free will become quite clear and devastating against it being a thing. This essentially destroys a lot of religions which are fundamentally based on humans having free will. Detailing the full chain of thought would take quite a bit of space, but the quick answer is that the ability for free will is hiding from us if it actually exists. Many people reach for quantum mechanics and its source of randomness as room for consciousness to exist that gives us free will, but the problem there is neurologically we operate at a far larger size than quantum effects would be measured. There's also no way to control the outcome of quantum events as it is truly random. So one would need to show how our neurological physiological minds could manipulate quantum space, which of course they can't. At the level our brains operate, we are well into deterministic physics.

While they absolutely deny this, the impression I get is that they are making a god of the gaps argument. Consciousness is something we don't understand yet, and can't even really define well as many people here have pointed out, so to them it doesn't feel like a classic God of the gaps.

For that reason, I find your comment above quite interesting. I personally find philosophy to be a fascinating and useful tool, but it definitely has a tendency to mislead, especially in areas where hard science can inform. Of course there's an entire debate around the philosophy of science itself, but that feels off topic here.

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

#353

It seems wild to me to write a (popular) article about consciousness in the year 2026 without addressing the elephant in the room: we are able to devise computer programs of increasing complexity that replicate more and more behaviors that were once the sole domain of humans, and at what point do we consider such computers to have experience in the sense that we have, and the sense in which calculators and thermostat…

> Should we expand our moral conception of responsibility or care to non-human patients, and if so, which? Such an irony. Humans have has since the bery beginning inflicted pain and suffering on other human beings. We are still doing it directly (e.g., wars) or indirectly (e.g., capitalism). The idea that perhaps in the not so distant future, machines may live better “lives” or be treated better than some humans is p…

I don't know where in my statement you saw the implication that we should not care about bad things happening to other humans, but it was a misapprehension.

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

#354
It’s going to be a long road, but I think as LLMs and their offspring create more and more convincing arguments for silicon consciousness we will conclude that consciousness is about as real as humours, and we’ve all been p-zombies this whole time.

Maybe the literary creature shoe should have started on the other foot, and sent us in search of proof that we are or are not p-angels. That at least puts the burden of proof on the compatibilists where it belongs.

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

#355
post #325

> It is time to give up the pernicious dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness and embrace the reality that our soul, or our spiritual life, is consistent with our fundamental physics. Why is it pernicious?

Because it leads us down seemingly useful paths that are in fact dead wrong. There is only physics, but at some levels it more convenient to ignore the physics (what is happening in the body) and to describe our experience.

Rovelli is a reductionist, the only logically and physically defensible intellectual position, while dualism is inherently supernatural, invoking phantoms, phenomenology that is purely fictitious.

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

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 simulatio…

Put human consciousness in an excel spreadsheet and get back to us.

Look up the “China brain” idea. It’s basically the same. Could you explain why that wouldn’t be conscious a priori?

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

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are emotions, really? It’s a bit easier than consciousness to research but still many theories exist. A popular one is that emotions always appear because the work(ed) to one’s benefit. They are always meant to manipulate the environment. With sociopaths, do they simulate, generate, push away, ignore, control, their emotions, more or less than others? Also psychopathy/sociopathy is difficult to research because…

Emotions do seem to act as signaling, but is that the same as an attempt at manipulation for the benefit of the individual? It seems conceivable in social groups that having an honest accounting of how people are feeling (via emotions) available to the group might benefit the group in achieving their goals while not always benefiting the individual.

I don’t see how this is in contradiction.

To give one perspective of many, Marshall Rosenberg spent his life researching emotions and violence, and from his point of view, anything you do can ultimately be traced back to your own goals. In his view, it’s more useful to allow this idea and explore it, without judging it as negative. Survival/benefit of the group can be your very own personal (long term) goal. For example, a typical tradeoff is your (very own) need to belong, since your survival literally depends on it. No need to see it as either-or; to resolve the inner conflict, one can own both sides of the argument.

Making your emotional state transparent to the group can in that sense again benefit yourself (and the group), but to think that is always the case and that everybody will comply (or even be able to) will lead to disappointment (disillusion), out of principle, since you are installing a moral rule that doesn’t match reality. The verbal sharing of your emotions might successfully (and openly) manipulate the group to include your own goals, and/or the actions you take (taking your emotions into account or not) might.

Note how I am using “manipulation” in its original/neutral form, which means “to move”/influence. Typically, we use the word to convey a judgement - some forms of attempted influence we see as good/acceptable, others we see as negative. But that judgement is based on our own values, and somebody else will have different values. We can see this in how our cultures judge lying (and how that judgement changes over time). Is not sharing all you know a lie (of omission)? Is it acceptable to not always share all your thoughts? In many cultures (families), it is deemed offensive to tell certain truths; there is an expectation to lie! Once there is an expectation, it is not considered manipulation. In some hacker communities, sharing your emotions is considered offensive and an unacceptable attempt of manipulation!

A simplistic perspective which you can check for yourself and compare with others: Anger means you experience something you judge as wrong and possible to influence. Sadness means you experience something you judge as wrong but outside of your sphere of influence. Fear is a judgement of danger. The judgement is real; the situation itself may not actually be dangerous (today). It’s a signal, but it’s not based on reality/facts but your own judgement of it. You can tune the signal and thus your experience by investigating and changing your judgments - without sacrificing any of your needs or goals. Emotional reprogramming takes time, but it’s not outside of your control, nor is it driven by some higher truth than your own judgments, based on your prior experiences.

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

#358
post #325

> It is time to give up the pernicious dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness and embrace the reality that our soul, or our spiritual life, is consistent with our fundamental physics. Why is it pernicious?

Because it leads us down seemingly useful paths that are in fact dead wrong. There is only physics, but at some levels it more convenient to ignore the physics (what is happening in the body) and to describe our experience. Rovelli is a reductionist, the only logically and physically defensible intellectual position, while dualism is inherently supernatural, invoking phantoms, phenomenology that is purely fictitious.

Ok, but that doesn't really address "pernicious". I understand pursuits of philosophy are inherently concerned with truth, but does not truth mean pernicious? My experience of reading philosophers is limited; is Rovelli just a materialist and that's that? Is this positivism?

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

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I'm following you, what do you mean? That other animals as well have enough brain power for consciousness?

I said brain power isn't interesting because it doesn't prove anything. There are things that we absolutely know are not conscious yet have a lot of brain power, ie countless pieces of simple deterministic software that we can explain all the way down to the atoms like a sewing machine. Yes other animals have demonstrated brain power that exceeds some humans, or even all humans while they are young enough, if you jus…

A cat reaching for a cuddle is conscious or not? They recognise individuals and communicate desires well past the bounds of food or other basic needs into affection.

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

#360

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…

> 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.

But you can view consciousness as a natural phenomenon without being reductionist. In a Hempel's Dilemma-like turn, you could say something like: "consciousness, like mass, is a property of arrangements of matter and exists wherever matter is arranged in a particular way. Disrupt the arrangement, as with anesthetics, and the consciousness goes away."

You end up with something like integrated information theory: https://iep.utm.edu/integrated-information-theory-of-conscio...

From such a perspective, the article's byline, "Consciousness is not separate from the physical world — our “soul” is of the same nature as our body and any other phenomenon of the world", is true. Like mass or charge, consciousness is merely another property or feature of stuff of combinations of matter that exist in the physical universe.

But there's still a "hard problem of consciousness" with such a theory. The distinguishing feature of qualia-like consciousness remains: it can only be properly verified from the inside. Researchers may devise theories that say "if property X holds, then the lump of matter is conscious" (like Tononi is doing with IIT). And the theory they develop may be quite tight - for all actions where it predicts temporary loss of consciousness, people exposed to the experiment say "I wasn't conscious at that time". But until they can solve the hard problem - being able to detect the what-its-like from the outside, the hard problem remains.

Though, as you're saying, if you just want something that predicts observable outcomes, then consciousness theories that say "this anesthetic-like thing produces what, to the outside observer, is indistinguishable from loss of consciousness", might be good enough.

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