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Consciousness as a State of Matter (2014)

arxiv.org

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Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter (2014)

#11

Post by robertothais »

curo wrote: post #9
hackinthebochs wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you have it backwards. That there are observers doesn't seem like much of a mystery: there doesn't seem to be anything mysterious about observers beyond the right kind of computation. The mystery is the qualitative experience of conscious observers, the feel, the what it is like to be, etc.

> "beyond the right kind of computation" Could you explain this? The observer isn't a mystery, I agree. But the original comment seems spot on: if you are describing consciousness as a state of matter, then you're saying something like, "matter inherits a different set of qualities when it's in a consciousness state (as opposed to a solid or liquid state)." If the state change leads to a change of quality, then you'r…

If consciousness is a physical thing, how can you be so convinced that it is impossible to talk about it in physical terms? Couldn't the difficulty be due to a deficiency in our current explanatory power, as opposed to something more fundamental? What evidence do you have to support that biological talk (about consciousness, or otherwise) is necessarily irreducible to physical talk?

These questions are very interesting and very hard, and dismissing honest attempts to grapple with them rigorously, wrong as they may turn out to be, seems rash to me.

Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter (2014)

#12

Post by jamesrcole »

thriftwy wrote: post #5

Even if it wasn't nonsense, it would be. Because the description focuses on how we perceive the world; not on who is this we that perceives . The mystery of consciousness in the observer, not in what it observes.

I think the reason for this (common) error is that we can only imagine the world through what it's like in our conscious experience of it. So when we think of some system processing information "about" the world, we're imagining what it is about in conscious-experience terms, which tends to hide what is difficult to explain.

What is it that is difficult to explain? We don't (currently) know of any phenomenon that is like (for example) what a sound sounds like to us.

Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter (2014)

#13

Post by deburo »

thriftwy wrote: post #10
hackinthebochs wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you have it backwards. That there are observers doesn't seem like much of a mystery: there doesn't seem to be anything mysterious about observers beyond the right kind of computation. The mystery is the qualitative experience of conscious observers, the feel, the what it is like to be, etc.

To me it does. What is an observer? Is it distinguishable from its memory? If not, what do you have to do to a memory to add observer to it? Can we make a conscious machine? Why not? Maybe we can by simulating a brain exactly. But can we then figure out what in our model makes the sim-brain conscious? Can we turn it on and off? Most of our insights into how human mind works actually describe how a philosophic zombie…

I may be misunderstanding your claim, but otherwise I think the article would actually interest you. Here's a quote from the paper:

"Instead of starting with the hard problem of why an arrangement of particles can feel conscious, we will start with the hard fact that some arrangement of particles (such as your brain) do feel conscious while others (such as your pillow) do not, and ask what properties of the particle arrangement make the difference."

Is that not investigating what makes something conscious (i.e. an observer)?

EDIT: after a bit of reading, this is not intended for non-scientists. The introduction is interesting, but otherwise your time might be better spent reading critiques of this paper instead if you're a newbee like I am. Here's one such critique: http://blog.jessriedel.com/2014/05/13/comments-on-tegmarks-c...

Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter (2014)

#14

Post by hackinthebochs »

curo wrote: post #9
hackinthebochs wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you have it backwards. That there are observers doesn't seem like much of a mystery: there doesn't seem to be anything mysterious about observers beyond the right kind of computation. The mystery is the qualitative experience of conscious observers, the feel, the what it is like to be, etc.

> "beyond the right kind of computation" Could you explain this? The observer isn't a mystery, I agree. But the original comment seems spot on: if you are describing consciousness as a state of matter, then you're saying something like, "matter inherits a different set of qualities when it's in a consciousness state (as opposed to a solid or liquid state)." If the state change leads to a change of quality, then you'r…

>Could you explain this?

I'm not intending to say anything particularly deep. If we could exhaustively list the features of a "conscious observer", every feature except for qualia (the qualitative experience) could be cashed out as some kind of information processing (e.g. knowledge of one's own mental states). And so when it comes to explaining consciousness, the difficulty isn't the observer part, but the qualitative experience part.

>In biological terms, fine. In physical terms, impossible.

But if biology is just physics, then it should be possible in principle. We should encourage people to bring their particular expertise to the problem instead of taking our own conceptions so seriously to the point of actively discouraging ideas that don't fit. I'm happy Tegmark seems immune to charges of being a crackpot.

Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter (2014)

#15

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #14
curo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "beyond the right kind of computation" Could you explain this? The observer isn't a mystery, I agree. But the original comment seems spot on: if you are describing consciousness as a state of matter, then you're saying something like, "matter inherits a different set of qualities when it's in a consciousness state (as opposed to a solid or liquid state)." If the state change leads to a change of quality, then you'r…

>Could you explain this? I'm not intending to say anything particularly deep. If we could exhaustively list the features of a "conscious observer", every feature except for qualia (the qualitative experience) could be cashed out as some kind of information processing (e.g. knowledge of one's own mental states). And so when it comes to explaining consciousness, the difficulty isn't the observer part, but the qualitati…

Nobody acting in good faith is smart enough to be 100% wrong.

Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter (2014)

#16

Post by djtriptych »

irickt wrote: post #3

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6551 >>> Tegmark’s career is a rather unusual story, mixing reputable science with an increasingly strong taste for grandiose nonsense. In this book he indulges his inner crank, describing in detail an utterly empty vision of the “ultimate nature of reality.”

Unless this vision can be directly disproven, why should anyone attach labels like "grandiose" or "nonsense" or "empty"?

Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter (2014)

#17

Post by hackinthebochs »

thriftwy wrote: post #10
hackinthebochs wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you have it backwards. That there are observers doesn't seem like much of a mystery: there doesn't seem to be anything mysterious about observers beyond the right kind of computation. The mystery is the qualitative experience of conscious observers, the feel, the what it is like to be, etc.

To me it does. What is an observer? Is it distinguishable from its memory? If not, what do you have to do to a memory to add observer to it? Can we make a conscious machine? Why not? Maybe we can by simulating a brain exactly. But can we then figure out what in our model makes the sim-brain conscious? Can we turn it on and off? Most of our insights into how human mind works actually describe how a philosophic zombie…

>What is an observer?

There are two issues when it comes to consciousness: the experience and the experiencer. If we conceive of these two concepts as ultimately one in the same problem, then there is no issue with focusing on kinds of processing rather than observers as its ultimately addressing the same issue from a different angle.

If you conceive of these two concepts as separate issues, then your target should be the experience rather than the experiencer. If you consider all the features that make up an experiencer (sans qualitative experience), then these features can be cashed out in terms of information processing. The mystery isn't here, but in the qualitative experience.

>Most of our insights into how human mind works actually describe how a philosophic zombie will work.

Only as far as our descriptions of a brain are "local" in the sense that they don't consider global properties of such an information processing system. That is, we can have a description of a system that makes accurate predictions without making any high level statements about its processing. We can conceivably describe the workings of a biological creature without ever (explicitly) mentioning molecules, proteins, cells, DNA, action potentials, etc. Yet if we concluded from this that biological zombies were conceivable (physical systems that behaved exactly like biological organisms just without cells, proteins, etc), we'd be mistaken. But this is the same kind of leap that we make when take the p-zombie argument seriously.

Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter (2014)

#19

Post by jjaredsimpson »

thriftwy wrote: post #5

Even if it wasn't nonsense, it would be. Because the description focuses on how we perceive the world; not on who is this we that perceives . The mystery of consciousness in the observer, not in what it observes.

This simply isn't true. You seem to have read the abstract and made assumptions about the arguments of the paper.

Tegmark doesn't focus on the how; he spends the paper building an argument about what properties an observer must have.

It's very easy to call something you don't understand, or reject a priori, nonsense. But at least try to grapple with the argument and a make criticism with substance.

Re: Consciousness as a State of Matter (2014)

#20

Post by kordless »

thriftwy wrote: post #5

Even if it wasn't nonsense, it would be. Because the description focuses on how we perceive the world; not on who is this we that perceives . The mystery of consciousness in the observer, not in what it observes.

Nonsense is irrational, but not all irrational logic is nonsense.
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