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How does consciousness even make sense?

niklasbuehler.com

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Re: How does consciousness even make sense?

#11

Post by ncmncm »

vokep wrote: post #5
ncmncm wrote: post #2

> I can’t really grasp that. Do my thoughts make sense? Where’s the flaw? That is called argument from disbelief. It is a common fallacious argument form. The only mystery about consciousness is why anyone insists there is one.

what? obviously there is one, its the force driving the typing of these words. It isn't the machinery typing them but the fundamental quality of the machinery that feels like it does. Of course I can't prove my consciousness to you, but I operate on the assumption that p-zombies are nonsense, so, it should be entirely possible to prove your consciousness to yourself, albeit difficult due to lack of meaningful languag…

I have no difficulty accepting my own consciousness, or even yours, to the degree the word has a definition at all.

I have subjective experience, including the subjective experience of observing my own behavior. So do you. The redness of a tomato has to look like something, and furthermore has had to evolve to catch the attention of animals like yourself that would be nourished by it. Meanwhile, animals like yourself have needed to evolve to find red things appealing. No mysteries there.

Anything that can perceive itself and can perceive itself perceiving will exhibit all the hallmarks of what we call consciousness. It's a recognizable behavior pattern with a name. Imagining there is more to it than that is just tying yourself in knots to no purpose.

Re: How does consciousness even make sense?

#12

Post by briga »

dTal wrote: post #4

>I can’t really grasp that. Do my thoughts make sense? Where’s the flaw? This is the "Argument from Incredulity by Implausible Consciousness Substrate"[0]. Other examples include Searle's Chinese Room, and the China Brain thought experiment (what is it with China?). To your credit, you've immediately spotted the problem - how is the actual human brain any different? It's also some sort of broadly mechanistic physical…

There is another more nuanced argument, by Colin McGinn, that states that consciousness is a broadly mechanistic system, just not one that human minds are equipped to understand. Which could of course be another type of personal incredulity, but given the general lack of consensus on the subject so far seems possible

Re: How does consciousness even make sense?

#13

Post by djokkataja »

vokep wrote: post #5
ncmncm wrote: post #2

> I can’t really grasp that. Do my thoughts make sense? Where’s the flaw? That is called argument from disbelief. It is a common fallacious argument form. The only mystery about consciousness is why anyone insists there is one.

what? obviously there is one, its the force driving the typing of these words. It isn't the machinery typing them but the fundamental quality of the machinery that feels like it does. Of course I can't prove my consciousness to you, but I operate on the assumption that p-zombies are nonsense, so, it should be entirely possible to prove your consciousness to yourself, albeit difficult due to lack of meaningful languag…

I think the grandparent meant that the only mystery is that consciousness is supposedly a mystery, not that consciousness doesn't exist.

Re: How does consciousness even make sense?

#14

Post by ncmncm »

djokkataja wrote: post #13
vokep wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what? obviously there is one, its the force driving the typing of these words. It isn't the machinery typing them but the fundamental quality of the machinery that feels like it does. Of course I can't prove my consciousness to you, but I operate on the assumption that p-zombies are nonsense, so, it should be entirely possible to prove your consciousness to yourself, albeit difficult due to lack of meaningful languag…

I think the grandparent meant that the only mystery is that consciousness is supposedly a mystery, not that consciousness doesn't exist.

Correct.

You might as well talk about the mystery of where the execution comes from, when the program starts, and of where it has gone when the program finishes.

Re: How does consciousness even make sense?

#16

Post by disown »

It doesn't make any sense because we don't know the what, how or the why of it yet.

Consciousness makes as much sense as a solar eclipse made to the primitive man who had no conception of the solar system. A program on your computer wouldn't make much sense unless you understood the inner workings - processes, kernel, ABI, CPU, etc.

Maybe one day we will find out as we learn more about the brain. Until then we just have to live with this magical mystery. The real question is how we deal with the ethical issues. We could learn a lot more about the brain if we could "break it", test it, experiment with it, etc. But obviously we can't do that with the human brain. Maybe start with simpler animal brains and then work our way up?

If we could triangulate the parts of the brain where consciousness resides, then perhaps we can disable that portion and create brains to experiment on? But then again, if we disable the part of the brain responsible for consciousness, how can we study consciousness?

Re: How does consciousness even make sense?

#17

Post by nmaley »

It's a really deep problem, which bothers a lot of philosophers and cognitive scientists. I don't pretend to know the answer, but here are some speculations.

We can speculate that consciousness is some kind of a representational process, using non-verbal, non symbolic representations. We can suppose that what is being represented is in part the state of my own body, and my current interactions with the external world. So this is not a static type of representation, it is a continuously changing representation, which is representing a real time 'dance' between my body and the world. So, returning to your (excellent) analogy of the field of rocks, the field of rocks would not be conscious unless and until it becomes an emergent representation of itself and its boundary with the rest of the world, all happening automatically and in real time. The field of rocks has no sensation of the sun's warmth because it has no representation of warmth, and no way of moving or changing it's own body as a response to that representation of warmth, and no attentional mechanism to prioritise how it responds to representations of warmth, hunger, thirst etc.

Once you start to think of consciousness as a representational process you start to see how consciousness might become an emergent phenomenon inside a machine 'designed' for creating representations. A machine like a living animal.

Of course, that puts you in the position of having to explain what is a non-symbolic, or non verbal, type of representation. But that's doable, I think.

Re: How does consciousness even make sense?

#18

Post by kordlessagain »

Defining consciousness will come down to doing so simply. Consciousness is emergent given lack of awareness equals lack of consciousness, especially when the lack of awareness is extended to seeing and hearing, or not. Consciousness emerges from awareness of objects, vision, hearing, thinking mind.

Who here can visualize an apple in their mind, literally seeing it as if existed and was being perceived by the eye (a sense organ)? Who can't? The answer will vary from person to person. I know what some have said, given I've asked 100s of people this question because I don't form internal imagery.

Even though some don't have that mind's eye view, it would seem most of us do build an internal model, similar to the apple, of the world around us, which is built from sensed information. Some of the people I've talked to can put "extra" things in that model. Dots on the wall. Boxes on tables.

If it can be updated, it must exist in mind and it is likely to exist in mind in a similar way for many, at least for us to all agree we seem to have similar experiences and see the world in similar ways.

Similar to an internal biological version of Unity, our eyes, ears, nose, taste and touch/feeling come together to create a sort of reality rendering "camera obscura" in the mind, allowing us to judge and interact with our perceived environment, through the copy we create of it.

Close your eyes, and the model fades (at least for most). Leave them closed long enough and you will lose what we are seeking to define here.

Re: How does consciousness even make sense?

#19

Post by kordlessagain »

zarmin wrote: post #15

Consciousness is fundamental, not emergent.

Roger Penrose says it's emergent because quantum mechanics is emergent. You can also find stuff by David Bohm saying something similar regarding Bohmian mechanics or de Broglie-Bohm theory.

Here is Hameroff and Penrose's paper on Orch OR: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S157106451....

Re: How does consciousness even make sense?

#20

Post by kordlessagain »

m0llusk wrote: post #10

Arguably this is saying that machine learning does not easily and directly yield consciousness as one might expect. If consciousness instead is focused on time and sequences then the machine learning needs to be used more to construct and compare narratives of sequences of observations and actions. That would enable machine learning to derive representations of causality and potentially reason that itself exists. Mos…

To enable machine learning to "become consciousness" it would need to start by having an internal model of reality running that was being built like we build ours, not some camera pointed at a object like robots do today. Well, I suppose DJI drones use SLAM like 3d environments, but they aren't detailed like what we see yet, but maybe in a few more generations...
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