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

Why would it serve the interests of AI companies to promote materialism? It seems to me that idealism would be more in the interest of AI companies to promote, since my impression is idealists are more likely than materialists to believe that AI will never be conscious, and AI being perceived as conscious would be problematic for companies that want to provide AI as a product.

It doesnt perceive the image of a camera, it's sensor is that image. What it means to perceive is for that image to form. This is the second great fallacies of idealism: (1) the genetic fallacy above that the origin/product of a process must share properties and (2) this fallacy of ambiguity on the word 'see'/perceive (between the mental act of drawing attention to an aspect of a perception, and the physiological act of forming that perception).

When I open my eye, light hits it, striking off the object which I am seeing. What it means to see is for that object to cause my perception. I am NOT seeing my perception, that doesn't make any sense -- it's incoherent because it's an infinite regress.

When I open my eyes and see the coffee, my body changes to have the perception of that coffee as part of my structure -- I am the photographic plate. Just as the photographic plate isnt taking a picture of itself, neither is my eye or mind.

To see is, akin to the photographic plate, to be changed by the world so that you have an impression of it. You do not see seeing, you see objects.

I followed and was very interested until:

> But the argument is weak. A philosophical zombie would claim to know what subjective experience is; otherwise, it would be empirically distinguishable from a human. Chalmers’s point is that the existence of the hypothetical, irreducible consciousness of which he speaks is something we can be convinced of only by introspection. During introspection, physical processes in my brain convince me of my consciousness. The same would theoretically happen in the zombie brain, convincing it of having consciousness as well. If this is true, 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 argument is self-defeating.

My reaction here: it seems to me that the p-zombie by construction doesn't have a "me" to be convinced, so "physical processes in my brain convince me of my consciousness. The same would theoretically happen in the zombie brain, convincing it of having consciousness as well." doesn't make sense.

Therefore the demonstration that the argument is self-defeating fell appart, and I stopped finding the article insightful.

Can someone help me see what I'm missing?

I'm not sure the article really adds up. The hard problem of consciousness in a normal definition is:

>to explain how and why organisms have qualia or subjective experience. (from Wikipedia)

(or "why the brain’s behavior is accompanied by experience at all" in the article)

He then supposes this "assumes upfront that there exists a metaphysical gap between mind and body". But there probably isn't so he jumps to:

>So, there is no “hard problem of consciousness.”

But that doesn't explain how/why there are qualia and the like.

I personally think how/why qualia it a real hard question but scientifically tractable.

A little guessing. You can assume we evolved - much evidence - and so consciousness has survival / reproductive functionality. The brain has billions of sensory, memory and other neurons and they have to compress that data down to something a creature can act on - should it feed of run away etc. So conscious awareness is probably something like a situation summary you can act on.

One interesting thing is there is a lot of unconscious awareness and actions going on - when you walk across a room the nervous system has to process all sorts of stuff about your body position and coordinate dozens of muscles but you are normally not consciously aware of it, so presumably the conscious bit of you brain is some small portion linked to the thinking talking and remembering bits.

I think much of the subtlety of conscious experience is because there is a lot of unconscious things underlying it. You see say a red apple and it's linked to memories of apples, instincts for food, evolved associations with red, your mood and the like. It all gets reduced in something like a lossy compression to what you are aware of.

[flagged]