Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

noemamag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 822 posts

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

#451

Post by thomastjeffery »

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…

You are asking for evidence of absence, and that is the entire point. We don't understand brains, therefore this one specific theoretical feature (consciousness) must exist. Why should we stubbornly endorse a tautology for which there is no evidence?

Experience is subjective. That's why we need science in the first place.

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

#452

Post by visarga »

amelius wrote: post #385
losvedir wrote: post #370

I once read a comment on here that I found interesting but haven't been able to find it again. Basically it flipped the problem on its head. We're arguing how you start at the physical substrate and get to consciousness. They argued that you could start with consciousness and argue how you get to the physical side (experimentation via your conscious experience, etc). It was from a religious individual who called the…

One thing is certain: we are talking about consciousness. This means that the world does not work like this: there is physics, and above it there is consciousness which is merely monitoring the physics. This cannot be true (or is unlikely), since we are discussing consciousness and therefore the physical act of talking is driven by something that knows that consciousness exists. There must be a link back from conscio…

> There must be a link back from consciousness to physics.

Yes, and it is trivial to prove. One second lapse of attention and you could get bitten by a snake, or run over by a car. If the top level (consciousness) fails, the neurons die too. Cells depend on this centralized decision point to exist. There is no way to have humans without consciousness because ... they would not be able even to put the thing into the other thing to make more of us without it ... excuse the language, but the argument is solid.

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

#453

Post by lanstin »

visarga wrote: post #437
nemomarx wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

I doubt your conclusion that unified action needs unified mentation. One may take unified action without achieving unity of the contents of the brain. Acting with instantaneous regret if you will, flying by the seat of your pants, etc. The brain seems to be able to let competing subsystems alternate getting expressed in action.

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

#454

Post by yubblegum »

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 no problem here. [I may have shared this thought experiment before here using a different handle.]

Let us assume there exists in our planet an undiscovered island that has developed independent of other human societies. This is not an island of primitives. The inhabitants pride themselves on their scientific and empirical approach to knowledge acquisition, however they are not quite on par with the rest of the planet in terms of scientific knowledge and technology. Specifically for our purposes, they have not yet discovered Electro-Magnetism.

Now assume somehow (via a shipwreck, or whatever) these islanders come into possession of advanced transmitter/receiver communication devices, and we'll assume they are in working condition and have some sort of power source (magical internal or solar or whatever - they can be turned on).

As the scientists on this island fiddle with these boxes, they notice that certain configuration of the device interface will cause it to 'emit voices, songs, and music'. Various knobs seem to change the voice, etc. Further experimentation and they discover that speaking to the device under certain configuration seems to establish a sort of 'communication' with the box. After these blackbox approaches, they start taking apart these mechanisms (while they are turned on). Now let's just pretend the internal radio communication components are perfectly modular (in terms of functionality) and can be removed and put back as required.

They systematically begin removing various components and noting which uncanny features of these mystrious devices cease to function. One board removed and they no longer get certain band. Another board removed and the box doesn't talk back (think CB). They meticulously map out all these component to function mappings. The results are indisputable: These boxes are some sort of 'thinking machines'. The 'brains' of the machanisms is isolated to the radio elements of the devices. The 'proof' of this is that the boxes cease to speak or respond to communication when these elements are removed.

> consciousness can be damaged when it's physical container is damaged

Just like those radios.

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

#455

Post by hallole »

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…

And for that reason, we'll never discover the soul. It will perpetually be that "something" that we are missing in our understanding of things. Assume for a minute that we have the basic picture correct, that there is no non-physical soul: your belief would have us searching for the rest of time! Isn't it best to suspend the question?

There probably isn't any simple causative explanation (as in the example you provide). The brain is the most complex structure we know of and "self" arises from that deep complexity; this is an answer that I'm content with, as anything more in-depth / closer to the "metal" would quickly exceed my ability to understand it.

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

#456

Post by bonobo »

beaker52 wrote: post #251
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…

So many people appear to be mesmerised by their own place in the physical world, and taken by this powerful idea that the physical world is the source of it all, giving rise to everything through physical laws and processes, like our brain, a product of quaint physical processes, giving rise to consciousness. To me, that idea seems entirely back-to-front. To me, it appears obvious to me that I am having a conscious e…

I find your position quite interesting but I feel like it still suffers the same issues I've seen in other "mind-first" arguments (I'm sorry for any ill-defined terms as I'm not a philosopher myself), such as p-zombies (how do you know other people are conscious as well?) and the origin of it.

I think both positions (physicalism vs mind-first) suffer from the same issue that is to reach the bottom of it all, except physicalism seems to have reached further. In the past we wondered what the world was made of and we observed it, coming to the idea of elements such as Aether, then later developed chemistry then physics, reaching layer below layer of rules that interact to the emergence of the layer above. Lots of rules that we can (apparently) reproduce and verify, cells emerging from molecules interacting emerging from atoms interacting emerging from quantum particles emeging from quantum fields... Maybe emerging from strings or a simulation? We don't know. It seems to me we also don't know how to tell we've finally reached the bottom of it, but what we have sounds pretty solid.

In a mind-first view it seems that this stack is upside-down, with a consciousness giving rise to a brain in a world with its objects which are made of molecules coming to existence upon observation (that is, chemistry would be a top layer after conscience further inspecting it), which are ruled by physics etc. Except this cause-and-consequence relation is not clear to me. Like you said:

> To me, it appears obvious to me that I am having a conscious experience from which the physical world and all its laws and processes, emerge.

How would this work if, from your perspective, I'm also conscious and not a p-zombie? Do I give rise to the world, or do you? Do we all collectively create a single world from our consciousness in a "Sandman's Dream of a Thousand Cats" way? And if we're all p-zombies except you, why bother arguing with us? (not throwing shade btw, I'm just interested in your point of view).

To me physicalism looks like a flame graph with physics at the bottom and minds at the tips of the flames, with less simpler things giving rise to multiple complex things, while mind-first looks like an icicle graph (assuming multiple consciousness) or an upside down triangle (assuming a single consciousness), with physics at the top (all "graphs" putting cause at the bottom and effect on top).

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

#457

Post by visarga »

lanstin wrote: post #453
visarga wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

I doubt your conclusion that unified action needs unified mentation. One may take unified action without achieving unity of the contents of the brain. Acting with instantaneous regret if you will, flying by the seat of your pants, etc. The brain seems to be able to let competing subsystems alternate getting expressed in action.

Not all brain activity is unified, I just claim it must unify on the output side - behavior and language.

But this is not a brain or organism only problem. Even a cell must unify in crucial moments such as division and chemotaxis. A cell either divides or not, no mid point. To persist it must unify at some moments in its activity, yet it is a distributed system of many parts.

The core principle here is - what is the unit of selection? the cell survives or not as a whole, the organism also survives or not as a whole, not organ by organ. Selection chooses the mechanisms that are viable.

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

#459

Post by hnfong »

StackBPoppin wrote: post #382
losvedir wrote: post #370

I once read a comment on here that I found interesting but haven't been able to find it again. Basically it flipped the problem on its head. We're arguing how you start at the physical substrate and get to consciousness. They argued that you could start with consciousness and argue how you get to the physical side (experimentation via your conscious experience, etc). It was from a religious individual who called the…

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…

There are a lot of similar ideas in various ancient/traditional spiritual/esoteric teachings. "Consciousness first" is actually the more typical assumption among the traditions that have something we'd label as a philosophy.
Post reply on HN