It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by visarga » Mon, May 18, 2026, 1:36 PM UTC

svnt wrote: post #412

This argument sounds nice at a surface level, but seems deeply incoherent and wrong in a way I haven’t yet put my finger on precisely. How can you say this: > We have souls. We have an inner self. We can treat ourselves as transcendental subjects in the Kantian sense. We have emotions and spiritual life; we experience qualia. These entities are not obtained by addition to a physical state, but by subtraction from a c…

I think there is a gap, but it's not what they think it is - it is the gap between description and execution. Chalmers wants a description level explanation for the properties of execution, which is not possible. He wants to get for free what is an irreducible recursion between cost and action. The gap is not ontological, it is epistemic.

It just means we can't know without paying the price, walking the path of the process, step by step. No jumping ahead. We can't even predict a 3 body system far ahead. We can't tell the properties of a code without executing it. We can't compress most processes, their execution is the shortest description. Chalmers wants 3p to eat for free at the table of 1p.

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

#432

Post by nemomarx » Mon, May 18, 2026, 1:37 PM UTC

storus wrote: post #405

This article had absolutely no proof of its statements and all it did was use past allegories. We are definitely missing something in our understanding of the world, like before we knew about electromagnetism or radioactivity. There are some mechanisms we know about that contribute to the knowledge of self that become exposed by conditions like Depersonalization/Derealization disorder from certain neurons in inflamma…

I've always thought that the mechanisms there create the experience or the illusion of a continuous self or something in that direction. When you've experienced it breaking down (automatic actions happening before you remember deciding to do them is a big contributor to the floaty dream like effect) you start to think maybe there's several systems and the observation and memory parts are just making sense of them. We assemble a self by keeping those memories and experience in a very particular way.

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

#433

Post by tim333 » Mon, May 18, 2026, 1:37 PM UTC

trollbridge wrote: post #419

storus wrote: post #405

This article had absolutely no proof of its statements and all it did was use past allegories. We are definitely missing something in our understanding of the world, like before we knew about electromagnetism or radioactivity. There are some mechanisms we know about that contribute to the knowledge of self that become exposed by conditions like Depersonalization/Derealization disorder from certain neurons in inflamma…

Agreed. The main reason we believe consciousness exists is because we all experience it. So it’s hard to deny.

But the debate isn't whether consciousness exists. It's largely whether it's the product of normal neurons doing their thing or something more. Also the details of how it works of course.

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

#434

Post by mordymoop » Mon, May 18, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

storus wrote: post #405

This article had absolutely no proof of its statements and all it did was use past allegories. We are definitely missing something in our understanding of the world, like before we knew about electromagnetism or radioactivity. There are some mechanisms we know about that contribute to the knowledge of self that become exposed by conditions like Depersonalization/Derealization disorder from certain neurons in inflamma…

Over time I've found that by far the highest ROI move in a consciousness debate is to simply ask "Oh, interesting. How do you know that?" and watch everyone on all sides flounder. It's one of the few places where otherwise smart people make confident statements that they don't even realize they can't support until they're asked to try. The intuitions are so strong that they seem to swamp reason.

This has caused my own position, over time, to be a deep agnosticism about what's actually going on.

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

#435

Post by teodosin » Mon, May 18, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

squidbeak wrote: post #410

StackBPoppin wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I've shared my thoughts on here, but this sounds a lot like my thought process: what if you start with nothing but consciousness, then find a path to a physical universe? Consciousness is inherently about awareness, so at some point the consciousness would be aware of itself. Now it has the concepts of before/after, and from that opposites, incrementing, subtracting, 1 dimensional space etc. Eventually…

The problem with this line of thought is that consciousness can be damaged when it's physical container is damaged. A piece of falling masonry can be enough to shear off large parts or all of it. If consciousness was fundamentally distinct, this wouldn't be the case, would it?

Is it consciousness that gets damaged, or just its contents? If you destroy an object, can you say that you've destroyed the space it occupied?

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

#436

Post by ordu » Mon, May 18, 2026, 1:39 PM UTC

trollbridge wrote: post #419

storus wrote: post #405

This article had absolutely no proof of its statements and all it did was use past allegories. We are definitely missing something in our understanding of the world, like before we knew about electromagnetism or radioactivity. There are some mechanisms we know about that contribute to the knowledge of self that become exposed by conditions like Depersonalization/Derealization disorder from certain neurons in inflamma…

Agreed. The main reason we believe consciousness exists is because we all experience it. So it’s hard to deny.

Your arguments reminds me of logical loop. A implies B, B implies A. It doesn't mean that A and B are true. You have to be conscious to experience and to be conscious means to to experience. Maybe we are not conscious after all and do not experience? Maybe it is just a lie we are telling ourselves?

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

#437

Post by visarga » Mon, May 18, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

nemomarx wrote: post #432

storus wrote: post #405

This article had absolutely no proof of its statements and all it did was use past allegories. We are definitely missing something in our understanding of the world, like before we knew about electromagnetism or radioactivity. There are some mechanisms we know about that contribute to the knowledge of self that become exposed by conditions like Depersonalization/Derealization disorder from certain neurons in inflamma…

I've always thought that the mechanisms there create the experience or the illusion of a continuous self or something in that direction. When you've experienced it breaking down (automatic actions happening before you remember deciding to do them is a big contributor to the floaty dream like effect) you start to think maybe there's several systems and the observation and memory parts are just making sense of them. We…

There is a very good explanation here - not what brains do, but what brains MUST do. Can we walk left and right at the same time? Can we drink coffee before brewing it? No. There is a bottleneck, a serial action bottleneck on the body. So the parallel brain activity must serialize on the output channel. It has to, or face ruin. If action is serialized in time by physical necessity, then information processing must also unify before action in order to support it. We must act as one -> we must cognize as one -> or perish. There is no way to allow each limb to do its own thing, or the brain not to decide what comes next in a unified way.

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

#438

Post by saidnooneever » Mon, May 18, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

storus wrote: post #405

This article had absolutely no proof of its statements and all it did was use past allegories. We are definitely missing something in our understanding of the world, like before we knew about electromagnetism or radioactivity. There are some mechanisms we know about that contribute to the knowledge of self that become exposed by conditions like Depersonalization/Derealization disorder from certain neurons in inflamma…

the proof of our lack of understanding is the countless things we can measure but cannot explain.

Good on point response in my opinion. A lot of people want to close doors because those doors being open makes them uncomfortable. This is a mistake. If you want to be rigorous about what is then you need to be equally rigorous about what is not.

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

#439

Post by hnfong » Mon, May 18, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

squidbeak wrote: post #410

StackBPoppin wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I've shared my thoughts on here, but this sounds a lot like my thought process: what if you start with nothing but consciousness, then find a path to a physical universe? Consciousness is inherently about awareness, so at some point the consciousness would be aware of itself. Now it has the concepts of before/after, and from that opposites, incrementing, subtracting, 1 dimensional space etc. Eventually…

The problem with this line of thought is that consciousness can be damaged when it's physical container is damaged. A piece of falling masonry can be enough to shear off large parts or all of it. If consciousness was fundamentally distinct, this wouldn't be the case, would it?

There is a "The Matrix" (the movie) argument where we posit these:

1. Whatever you believe is true is true (this is how the consciousness builds worlds before there is any physical existence)

2. Our consciousness built the physical world and runs it like a simulation.

3. The reason our minds and consciousness are highly correlated to the physical situation is to make the simulation feel real. It's a specifically designed feature that to a large extent synchronizes the "host" and the simulated objects so that despite being outside of the simulation, the "host" feels like they are inside the simulation.

4. The corollary to 3 (and 1) is that if you are damaged or die in the simulation, that effect is mirrored outside the simulation too (to some extent).

----

(Never thought my adventures in metaphysics would be useful in a HN discussion thread!)

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

#440

Post by innin » Mon, May 18, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

mikk14 wrote: post #263

energy123 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A true monist would realize that any experience of the uploaded being that received a copy of the brain is not felt by the original brain that has been copied. This is a fact and it is elementary to see it as true, as well as supporting the view that the copy is not the same being at all. If your description of computation functionalists is accurate, then they simply are dualists and would do good in admitting this t…

There is no prove that continuity really matters. In fact who goes to say that your current conscious self is the same as your self from five minutes ago. After all you do not feel what they felt. The only thing that makes you think that the two are related or even the same is your state (memories, emotions). Why would we even think about whether cloning is able to transmit consciousness when we don’t even know if consciousness is transmitted over time?

Edit: Just to clarify my opinion: This means that the relationship between my self from five seconds ago and my current self and the relationship between my self from five seconds ago and a clone of that self that aged the same amount would be equivalent. Both of us would _not_ be the same as my past self