Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

ieet.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 175 posts

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#111

Post by brotchie »

alokm wrote: post #99
brotchie wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12 months ago I would have strongly disagreed with your first sentence, but after a load of reading on Physics, Philosophy, and Neuroscience, my views have changed. I am still unable to reconcile my "internal" conscious experience with our current understanding of Physics. I'm a materialist, however I'm trending towards the believe that consciousness is an emergent physical property of massively interconnected system…

I also concur that "consciousness is an emergent physical property of massively interconnected systems". But "all matter has some degree of internal conscious experience" is really a philosophical question. Internet can be considered as a living being with different people acting as different components and communicating with each other the way neurons do. But is the internet as a whole, not its participants, conscio…

I just looked back through parts of Koch's book. He was indeed talking about IIT. The wiki article on IIT is interesting, I didn't realise IIT had such a rigorous mathematical definition! I'll read further.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#112

Post by blueprint »

> Consequently, say the signatories, the scientific evidence is increasingly indicating that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.

That's because neurological substrates don't generate consciousness. There is no evidence to the effect that they do. However, when we understand the structure of the system of consciousness it's very easy to see how consciousness is generated and maintained.

The role of all neural systems is

1. to transmit to the consciousness what the body sees, hears, learns, etc., and

2. to express what is in consciousness through the body.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#113

Post by smosher »

Zigurd wrote: post #87
smosher wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is without any philosophical backup the neural correlate is entirely uncompelling—it's merely a clinical definition of a measure of... nothing meaningful. One that can be just as easily applied to a recording device, modulo the explicit mention of neurons. It gets worse. When you look at it closely there's no useful reason to restrict any of these measures with arbitrary criteria to the things we consider…

> The problem is without any philosophical backup the neural correlate is entirely uncompelling—it's merely a clinical definition of a measure of... nothing meaningful. Gravity is arguably a more compelling concept to someone falling off a ladder than to a student in a high school physics class. But, so? Does gravity lose meaning on a scale that is too large or too small to fit human experience?

The physics has obvious relevance to the experience and leaves no experiential questions unanswered. There's no problem with gravity.

I'm not looking for a why—the common complaint about gravity—I just want all the whats to match up. The meaninglessness is in reference to the question of consciousness. If you supply this to the asker, they could rightly ask, "sure, but what about my question?" Perhaps there is no reconciliation and you might want to complain that the question is nonsense—that complaint would make a better answer than a collection of irrelevant facts.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#114

Post by tbrownaw »

verroq wrote: post #31
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it programmed into us? If not how do we feel it? If it is programmed in, can it be re-written?

Humans adapt to the moral system of their society. There is no set of "universal morals" that all humans have. But do realise this, since I'm not a moral relativity apologist. I'm going to say that moral systems are not equal and some backward societies need to get their systems fixed.

There is no set of "universal morals" that all humans have.

What about « If "everybody" (who I identify with to at least such-and-such a degree) did X, would it harm me or my family/descendants? »?

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#115

Post by leoedin »

GotAnyMegadeth wrote: post #90
leoedin wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pain is a feedback sensor which indicates that something's gone wrong. You could build a machine with pressure sensitive grippers. You could even place a threshold on that, above which the machine reacted by moving in the opposite direction. Biological pain is just a complicated version of that. Pain is just our minds interpretation of damage signals. At what point do you draw the line. "This machine doesn't feel pai…

Do you reckon a machine could have a sensor that made it feel emotional pain when it thought about other machines feeling emotional pain, because they lost a machine that they were close to through an extreme level of physical pain?

Given that we are biological machines, I'd say I do. Saying "machines don't feel pain" suggests that pain is something more than a complex process happening in a biological machine. It's not.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#116

Post by cscurmudgeon »

Zigurd wrote: post #80
alokm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness is not solely a matter of computation. Even if we are able to simulate the brains of lesser beings, doesnt necessarily mean that there will be self awareness in the simulation. I think this is one area where we still have a lot of catching up to do.

What process takes place in your cranium that does not take place in a petri dish containing some of your brain cells?

You have an assumption that consciousness is just a brain process.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#117

Post by stiff »

smosher wrote: post #103
stiff wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that multiple times in the history of science the search for somehow philosophically sound underpinnings led to stagnation and not to progress, that was in fact what Aristotle did to a large extent and was the main obstacle to development of science altogether. The recent example of this is the search of aether. In the end the way that science has progressed is by dropping too much "whys" and sticking…

I think you're confused. I'm not asking for philosophical proofs end-to-end, I'm asking for the framing. If you look at the formulation it starts out as a magical-seeming property, yet the definitions and processes do nothing to demystify that property. If you look at that process carefully you'll find the deceit: this is not an answer to the question of consciousness as asked. With the right philosophical treatment…

The problem is that the answers you are looking for are of philosophical nature and not of scientific one (you talk about "demystifying" consciousness, "elucidating it"). The neural correlates might not clarify what consciousness is, but they might yield answers to precise scientific questions, such as: what brain activity is necessary and sufficient for a person to be able demonstrate self- or world- awareness. We might need to first answer to such questions before we gain any new insights of more philosophical nature. I am not saying this method is the silver bullet, but certainly I cannot agree the results are meaningless or "only reaffirm our prejudices".

My only point is really that the lack of a great definition of consciousness doesn't diminish the value of research like the one cited here.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#118

Post by jessedhillon »

blueprint wrote: post #112

> Consequently, say the signatories, the scientific evidence is increasingly indicating that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. That's because neurological substrates don't generate consciousness. There is no evidence to the effect that they do. However, when we understand the structure of the system of consciousness it's very easy to see how consciousness is…

No post body was provided.

Re: Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness

#119

Post by kryten »

burntsushi wrote: post #110
kryten wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. This is typical human hypocrisy at work. The worst thing I find is the "I'll eat a sausage but I couldn't possibly eat a cute bunny wabbit". The sausage in its natural form is capable of being a valuable and loyal human companion. I haven't eaten meat since I was at university in the distant past after I got addicted to a combination of ramen noodles, mushrooms and home made pepper sauce. The ethical dilemma…

If your problem is with hypocrisy, then there are two solutions. One is the path you took, to be a vegetarian, and the other is to simply not have a problem with eating a cute bunny wabbit. > Regarding tastiness, Indian vegetarian food (particular aloo, gobi is far tastier than anything with meat in and you can grow ALL the ingredients yourself if you want without having to shovel a single turd. In your opinion.

There is a problem with your argument. Let me return the gift of pedantry:

Firstly, the problem I have with the hypocrisy is independent to a diet choice so the statement about the path is invalid.

Secondly, everything is subjective so your argument is moot (as is mine).

Post reply on HN