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No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

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Re: No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

#31

Post by test-it »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #9
Xcelerate wrote: post #4

I upvoted the original article not necessarily because I thought it was particularly well-written, but because I looked forward to seeing what the HN comments about the article would say. Nevertheless, I left to go somewhere before I had a chance to peruse them. I think in a conversation about consciousness, it's very important to define exactly what it is you're talking about. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I get the…

The interesting thing is that the scientific method is fundamentally based on humans agreeing about their experiences, usually ones involving their sense of sight.

No, it's not. It can be used by a single, blind person, be it a human or not.

Re: No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

#32

Post by vonsydov »

What's most interesting to me is how every few years (and every few decades sometime back) we're able to rationalize away certain kinds of subjective phenomena.

Will we eventually reach a point where we completely STOP considering pure awareness as a problem...don't know...I guess nobody knows. But this kind of thing happens every so often where a large amount of people stop taking something seriously. At this point e.g. existence of an anthropomorphic god.

Re: No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

#33

Post by eloff »

Xcelerate wrote: post #4

I upvoted the original article not necessarily because I thought it was particularly well-written, but because I looked forward to seeing what the HN comments about the article would say. Nevertheless, I left to go somewhere before I had a chance to peruse them. I think in a conversation about consciousness, it's very important to define exactly what it is you're talking about. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I get the…

The odds argument for example is easy explained with the anthropic principle - namely we wouldn't be thinking about the odds of being conscious unless we were conscious.

The article mostly takes three mysterious things: time, quantum mechanics, and consciousness and gives them one hand-waving "consciousness was always there and will always be there" answer. It's tidy in a way, but that's not science and it's completely opposed to the spirit of science.

Not to mention a non-physicist drawing conclusions about unrelated fields using difficult to understand theories is new-age mysticism. It's the same pseudoscience people like Deepak Chopra have been spouting for years. A physicist would be quick to point out that observation affects the quantum realm regardless of whether there is a human being checking the output of his instruments or not (although as I'm not a physicist, I may be too rash in drawing even that conclusion.) Or in Harris's words, the moon doesn't go away when nobody's looking at it.

Consciousness is indeed a mystery, but the article adds little of substance to the discussion.

Re: No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

#34

Post by paganel »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #6
Xcelerate wrote: post #4

I upvoted the original article not necessarily because I thought it was particularly well-written, but because I looked forward to seeing what the HN comments about the article would say. Nevertheless, I left to go somewhere before I had a chance to peruse them. I think in a conversation about consciousness, it's very important to define exactly what it is you're talking about. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I get the…

Neuroscience hasn't been able to produce a single theory on the origin of consciousness, unless one accepts "it emerges from neural activity" as an explanation. Consciousness appears to be the ultimate mystery. There is something very fundamental about it that we don't understand at all. This makes a lot of people uncomfortable, especially the type of people that would like to turn Science into a religion. We just do…

> There is something very fundamental about it that we don't understand at all. This makes a lot of people uncomfortable, especially the type of people that would like to turn Science into a religion.

I could be wrong, but as an European my understanding is that there are people in the States who actually believe in non-science things like Adam and Eve and all that, so that when you begin to say that maybe Science doesn't or can't have all the answers (for example just the other day I was thinking "hey, has anyone proved that mathematical induction is really intellectually honest? or was Hume actually right and it's all make-believe?") you're immediately tagged as "a lunatic guy who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old" by Science-loving American redditors (HN is a little bit more forgiving), doesn't matter that I may be an agnostic and that I'm amazed that things like "God" are brought into a discussion which tries to make sense of the things around us.

It would also help if people would have a little more knowledge of the history of Science itself, this way they'd know about guys like La Mettrie or the French positivists who lived in the 19th century, meaning this discussion has happened many times before.

Re: No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

#35

Post by test-it »

OK, what's your definition of consciousness?

Most animals, even single celled, need to have some way to handle the separation between "me" and "the rest of the world". I look at say my cat - it definitely has this concept somewhere in its brain circuitry. What human has is just more neurons.

Re: No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

#36

Post by beowulfey »

robbiep wrote: post #24
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neuroscience hasn't been able to produce a single theory on the origin of consciousness, unless one accepts "it emerges from neural activity" as an explanation. Consciousness appears to be the ultimate mystery. There is something very fundamental about it that we don't understand at all. This makes a lot of people uncomfortable, especially the type of people that would like to turn Science into a religion. We just do…

And what is wrong with 'it emerges from neural activity'? really, it is quite an adequate solution for a species with our current level of philosophical and scientific understanding. That doesn't mean it is right, and doesn't discount potentially other options such as something that, despite my own strong scientific background, I have a fondness for through buddhism and meditation - and which is mentioned in the orig…

Saying it emerges from neural activity doesn't explain the mechanism; it's merely the result of something we don't understand.

So neurons fire and we see this pattern of activity in a state of wakefulness etc, etc... well, okay but WHY?

I would say it will never be explained until we can recreate a consciousness artificially, and since it's next to impossible to experience another's consciousness, it might be an unsolvable problem.

Re: No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

#37

Post by guard-of-terra »

seiji wrote: post #29
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, it is only possible at the moment to define _intelligence_ as "that which emerges from neural activity". There is not evidence whatsoever that consciousness emerges from neural activity. This is just a type of religious dogma in disguise. Think about it. Thanks for the link.

There is not evidence whatsoever that consciousness emerges from neural activity. None? Ever? Consciousness could just be a free floating quantum mechanical genie attached to my back? Hogcock. We are only brains. If your brain gets squished, you don't really care because you'll cease to exist in this light cone.

That's what your player character in an action video game "thinks". If I get killed, I won't care anymore, because there would be nothing left of me.

Guess what, his consciousness is you and you will close the game and walk away. In a consciousness dimension your character can't even imagine.

This is absolutely unrooted parable, except that consciousness remains a mystery. What does it hide? We don't know.

Re: No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

#38

Post by gems »

blueprint wrote: post #8
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neuroscience hasn't been able to produce a single theory on the origin of consciousness, unless one accepts "it emerges from neural activity" as an explanation. Consciousness appears to be the ultimate mystery. There is something very fundamental about it that we don't understand at all. This makes a lot of people uncomfortable, especially the type of people that would like to turn Science into a religion. We just do…

Consciousness is a mystery only to those that cannot define what it is. What is the origin of awareness itself? It is the very activities one is aware of. The activities produce energy which we call consciousness. The dimension that the consciousness can see is determined by the quality of the very activities. Consciousness is thus not solely generated by neurological activities. Before denying this because of your f…

I don't understand what you're saying. Pretend like I am idiot and explain it to me in simple terms.

1. Can you define consciousness? Or is consciousness = awareness? Is that what you meant?

2. You ask "What is the origin of awareness itself?". I really don't understand this question. What is awareness? I can't even comprehend what you mean when you ask "what is the origin of [it]?". Colloquially, physical things have "origins", which is to say that at some point some physical thing was "created" or "crafted". My intuitive idea of awareness is that it is an experience, it's not something physical.

Re: No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

#39

Post by oblique63 »

kepano wrote: post #7

> "What discourages me here is that the overall tone of the HN commenters is: Get with the program. Instead of acknowledging that it is an open question and saying something like, “Interesting hypothesis, my own thoughts are that X, Y, Z, but have you read A, B, or C, which indicate Q…”, the response is: (chuckle) Consciousness? We solved that, didn’t you get the memo?" Amen. We need to stop letting the comments devo…

> why can't we be friends?

Indeed. Here, have an upvote to counteract the downvotes. It looks like this thread is heading to be derailed just as much as the last one unfortunately. HN is cool when it's about concrete subjects like tech/programming/business, but anything more abstract than that is really unnerving to watch unfold around here, and I'm sure we both wish it wasn't so. Honestly, the only reason I even comment on HN is to try and invoke these sorts of underrepresented viewpoints into conversation, but it's quite overwhelming to even try sometimes.

Re: No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about

#40

Post by stianan »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #27
stianan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your point, but I think invoking Gödel's incompletness theorems in this context is taking them far out of their scope.

I guess that depends on what you believe Mathematics to be. Is it a representation of reality itself (maybe the ultimate reality) or is it just a human construct? I don't know.

It's a theorem that starts off with some assumptions, and gives you some implications. It does not say anything as general as "some things are unknowable in mathematics".
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