Earlier quoted context omitted.
I.e., "The speed is other than the sum of the car parts." There is nothing there.
That would be weak emergence.
It's table stakes. If you can't process that, you are guaranteed to understand no more.
What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?
141–150 of 393 posts
Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?
#142My pet theory is that people who think that consciousness is not a hard problem are P-Zombies that can't experience the problem. On a more serious note, as a materialist, I have a really hard time accepting that my self/experience can't be explained materialistically. It's like I have this nice theory of everything, but it fails when I try to apply it to myself. Reminds me of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
I was a physicalist (and in some sense still am). In a nutshell your self and everything you experience and can experience is simulated. I live inside a simulation. The simulation is running on a physical brain, part of a physical human which is part of a physical universe.
This can also be probed with science. If we know how the brain wires itself, what it is computing and representing then I think we'll find these patterns in the brain.
This is how I best understand these things. I can also go into more detail how I came to think about this this way and how I got to this point.
Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?
#143My pet theory is that people who think that consciousness is not a hard problem are P-Zombies that can't experience the problem. On a more serious note, as a materialist, I have a really hard time accepting that my self/experience can't be explained materialistically. It's like I have this nice theory of everything, but it fails when I try to apply it to myself. Reminds me of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
You might not be very far off- apparently many people do not have an inner voice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_monologue#Absence_of_...
I now worry about some form of future cyborg racism where those without the gift are considered untouched by god or subhuman
Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's the connection between my perspective and my body? Your body is doing the experiencing. It is what's perceiving. Your mind is just your body's UI for the world and your body is the user.
And then step into the Star Trek transporter. :) You're obliterated, then perfectly reassembled on the other side. Is that still "you", "subjectively"? Should you or others even care about that question? And, if not, damn, that's ego-killing af.
Here's a thought experiment. You're going to use a Star Trek teleporter-like device to make an exact copy of yourself. What are the odds that you end up being the copy? Or rather, what should you believe the odds are that you will be the copy?
Of course, I, the original, will not be the copy, but if I go in knowing I'm not the copy, the the copy will come out knowing he's not the copy. Thus, you should go in believing there's a 50% chance you are the copy, and then both the original and the copy will come out with a logically consistent belief.
Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If it were trivial, we'd be creating conscious entities via knowhow and will, not the old fashioned (fun) way. I wasn't claiming the problem of consciousness as a whole was trivial, rather the specific questions being asked in the above comment become trivial when a biological origin of consciousness is assumed. > But we have no useful way of understanding the phenomena we feel and how that might differ from the rob…
> the specific questions being asked in the above comment become trivial when a biological origin of consciousness is assumed. But unless there are complementary answers, they're trivial in the "useless" sense. They (1) don't provide any explanatory power, and (2) may very well be wrong--because as we've established--we have no clue. It's of the same argumentative caliber as the anthropic principle: "Well, we're here…
For all the fancy words here, I don't find any substance. The evidence that consciousness is tied to the physical brain is overwhelming, and evidence that it exists outside the brain is nonexistent.
Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?
#146My pet theory is that people who think that consciousness is not a hard problem are P-Zombies that can't experience the problem. On a more serious note, as a materialist, I have a really hard time accepting that my self/experience can't be explained materialistically. It's like I have this nice theory of everything, but it fails when I try to apply it to myself. Reminds me of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
A program running in a computer would have a difficult time distinguishing itself from the computer hardware on which it runs. And it would have no direct perception of the programmer.
Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?
#147> One point on which you both clearly agree is that consciousness is an embodied phenomenon, It probably is but I wouldn't be so sure it is. I have neither a feeling nor a rationally logical proof of this idea. It's just an intuitive guess. > we have the ineffable experience of being alive in this world The experience of being, and the experience of attributes like "alive" and in "somewhere in particular" are separat…
> I have neither a feeling nor a rationally logical proof of this idea. It's just an intuitive guess. This intuition, that there is something special and unique about what 'we' are, is baked into our brains by many thousands of years of evolution, and this makes it so extremely difficult for us to believe that there's nothing more to us then a bunch of molecules. This is why people have invented theories about souls,…
We are unique as humans if you compare us to any biological being. Saying we are not is a very big understatement.
Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That still doesn't explain consciousness itself. Well, which part doesn't it explain? It's pretty conclusive as far as I am concerned. As among other things, you can explain why philosophers would even ask that question in the first place. > A cell just replicates because that's what the molecules in it happen to do And transistors just go on and off, yet people still spend years studying computer science. The exis…
> Well, which part doesn't it explain? It doesn't explain how consciousness emerges from this. Brains/computers/processes can self-reference or self-explain all they want, that still doesn't say how doing so results in having the actual consciousness you experience. It's not a trivial thing we're talking about here: there could be a brain just executing logic and making decisions, or there could be that same brain bu…
> there could be a brain just executing logic and making decisions, or there could be that same brain but it's actually aware of that fact
But here is the thing: You are not aware of any of this! You are only aware of the world around you and yourself in the form of a high level description. You are aware of cats, dogs, your arms and legs, etc. But that's perception, not processes being magically self aware. You have no clue what your brain is actually doing, that's completely invisible to you.
And that's the illusion. The process you are trying to explain doesn't exist. Consciousness is not processes being self aware. Consciousness is a process that tries to model the world in a way your brain can use to make sense of the world. And just like it does it with cats and dogs, so does it with itself. The thing you call "yourself" is a perception generated by the brain, it's not a thing that exist and does stuff.
Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is only fascinating if you refuse to accept a non-supernatural or non-metaphysical definition of consciousness. Otherwise, most of these questions become trivial when consciousness is considered as a physical, biological process bound to the brain. Why is consciousness bound to a person's location? Because their brain is bound inside their skull. Why are you inside your body and not someone else's? Because your…
I can completely follow your logic. And I completely agree that going supernatural or decending into a soul-debate is not constructive. That was not my intent. Still, you and I can probably agree to some extent, that there is an inner eye inside of our heads looking outside. It also makes sense to me, that those processes could spawn from a feedback loop inside of a brain. Still. why did this inner eye spawn in this…
I think when you learn your brain creates symbols -- neural pathways corresponding to real world objects or concepts, with further pathways linking together related symbols. One of these symbols corresponds to the system itself, a self-reference. That's the "inner eye", and it wouldn't make sense for it to be in someone else's head because then it wouldn't be self-referential.
Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?
#150I think it is impossible to understand Consciousness because Consciousness creates the brain and the whole universe. If you think of Consciousness as the thing that is first and which creates all the rest, it answers a lot of hard questions - questions like why is it so hard to even define Consciousness? Or weird paradoxes in QM. Or things like: why do we all share the present moment? Once you start to see Consciousn…
Replace the word “Consciousness” with “God” and it will equally make sense.