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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

#581

Post by dcminter »

don_esteban wrote: post #220
dcminter wrote: post #168

> can I believe my own conclusion of having this mysterious non-physical experience, knowing that if I were a zombie, I would be convinced of the same without actually having it? The point of the philosophical zombie is that they don't experience anything, nor do they convince themselves of anything. If they're "experiencing" or "convincing themselves" then they're not philosophical zombies by definition . We all (pr…

> The point of the philosophical zombie is that they don't experience anything, nor do they convince themselves of anything. If they're "experiencing" or "convincing themselves" then they're not philosophical zombies by definition. The problem is: Implicitly presupposing the existence of philosophical zombies implies the duality gap. It might as well be that philosophical zombies are mental construct that cannot phys…

> The problem is: Implicitly presupposing the existence of philosophical zombies implies the duality gap.

Sure, but if you're going to posit a philosophical zombie, don't posit one that has a rich inner life, experiences qualia, and is ridden with self-doubt FFS.

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

#583

Post by DubiousPusher »

cameldrv wrote: post #553
jffhn wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cannot be just a product of the body, else it could not have effect on the body and our tongues could not be moving speaking about it.

Chalmers’ claim is that the fact that it really exists and the fact that we can talk about it are unrelated and basically a coincidence, which I think is completely absurd… If you really believe in qualia IMO you have to bite the bullet and say that there must be physics that we don’t yet understand.

We're approaching the definition of magic here aren't we. And I think this is what really divides this discussion. There is one set of people who insist that things must be explainable. And if something is explainable, it yields to science and is no longer magic.

On the other side, you have people who insist that there are things which do not yield to science. So whether they admit it or not, they insist upon the existence of magic.

In fact, the definition of magic might as well be, that which does not yield to explanation. The only question once you believe in magic is, what alternative epistemology do you accept? Scripture? Tradition? Divine revelation?

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

#584

Post by dpark »

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…

Can you state in plain terms what this actually means?

> 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.

This is of course not true. I’ve watched people trip over their own feet because the simultaneously tried to go both left and right. I’ve done it myself.

And this says nothing about consciousness. Most actions are not conscious.

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

#585

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

dpark wrote: post #562
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major reason for the never-ending disagreements on the nature of consciousness is that pretty much 100% of the time no-one ever rigorously defines what (things) they are actually talking about, and the word is so overloaded and poorly defined that any discussion therefore devolves into people talking about different things, as well as the discussion being so vague as to be meaningless. There are of course other r…

> they have an opinion, but are just not qualified to discuss it! … I really don't think there is much mystery about consciousness at all Are you actually qualified to discuss this by your criteria?

I'm not a professional neuroscientist for sure, but I've certainly spent decades thinking about things like intelligence and evolution, perception, qualia, have read dozens of papers on subjects like cortical microarchitecure, etc, and would like to think I'm well enough informed to be able to discuss things like intelligence and consciousness.

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

#586

Post by roncesvalles »

trick-or-treat wrote: post #249
roncesvalles wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eye…

That's called solipsism. I went through it as a lad, I think it's not uncommon.

Not really. Solipsism means only you're (certain to be) conscious. It's an epistemological thing.

I'm making a purely biological conjecture motivated by some observations. I believe some humans are definitely conscious (including of course myself, if you take my word), but that some might not be. The conscious experience may just be a phenotypic variant, like having blue eyes, eidetic memory or dyslexia.

Consider also some recent research that shows that our consciousness is only observational and gives us an illusion of control. The actual decision-making is done a split second before we perceive to have done it. That means it might be totally optional.

Consider also that we know some living creatures to definitely not have a mind for example plants, and some creatures deemed highly unlikely to have a mind such as fish and insects. And yet they "operate" just fine. Somewhere in ecology there's a boundary and yet it's not apparent just by observing behavior.

I have a corollary hypothesis which is that only young people are actually conscious. One day you go to bed and your mind never wakes up, but your body keeps on living the automaton till you actually die.

(also if you're wondering, I don't think the boundary is along racial lines)

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

#587

Post by dpark »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #583
cameldrv wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chalmers’ claim is that the fact that it really exists and the fact that we can talk about it are unrelated and basically a coincidence, which I think is completely absurd… If you really believe in qualia IMO you have to bite the bullet and say that there must be physics that we don’t yet understand.

We're approaching the definition of magic here aren't we. And I think this is what really divides this discussion. There is one set of people who insist that things must be explainable. And if something is explainable, it yields to science and is no longer magic. On the other side, you have people who insist that there are things which do not yield to science. So whether they admit it or not, they insist upon the exi…

> On the other side, you have people who insist that there are things which do not yield to science. So whether they admit it or not, they insist upon the existence of magic.

This is a really valuable framing for this sort of conversation.

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

#588

Post by GoblinSlayer »

narag wrote: post #348
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are implying that consciousness has to include free will? Why?

That's backwards. People saying that there's no free will because determinism is implying that human consciousness is outside the physical world. Actually that's what TFA is about and makes a great job explaining it. My comment was responding to energy123 questioning there are philosophers that are both materialistic and consider human consciousness is "special". The moment you separate consciousness from all the phy…

That's strange, hard determinists are eliminativists, and eliminativists don't believe in consciousness, but I never saw them speaking about both at the same time.

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

#589

Post by wat10000 »

jamesalvarez wrote: post #566

Articles like these just make me think that's its a real possibility that not everyone has consciousness. Like some people are no conscious of their own visual imagery, maybe some people are not conscious at all.

I came here to comment this same thing. I had this idea as a laugh, but I'm taking it more and more seriously as time goes on. There are very confident statements made here that I don't think a conscious human could sincerely claim. If the author isn't taking the piss (and no indication they are) then I strongly suspect they don't have consciousness.

Kind of ironic given the bit of the article that focuses on P-Zombies and how they don't work because they have to be indistinguishable. Well, what if P-Zombies are real, and they are distinguishable, it's just not obvious because the P-Zombies grew up in a world where people talk about consciousness and lots of people around them have it.

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

#590

Post by fnordlord »

kevin42 wrote: post #538
trollbridge wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

“We experience it, therefore it exists” proves less than it seems. It proves there is an experience to explain. It does not prove that consciousness is what it appears to be from the inside. A mirage is still seen, but the thing it seems to show is not really there. Consciousness might be real in that same limited sense, while our folk model of it could be deeply wrong.

This is a really good point and something that I think is important to clarify at the very start of the discussion. In that way, I'm less interested in explaining consciousness than explaining experience. When I read this article, I felt like the author was only making his points by convoluting the two. By the end, I felt like, for an expert on the subject, I don't think he actually groks the fundamental point.
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