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It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

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Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#161

Post by don_esteban »

suzzer99 wrote: post #98
thepasch wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either all the computation happens "in the dark", as in a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet or a slide rule or Factorio, in which case we are p-zombies and consciousness is an illusion, which contradicts every waking moment of our experience You are still presupposing the premise here, in multiple ways: 1) "My experience is that I'm conscious, and math cannot result in consciousness, therefore consciousness is a s…

Here's my question: Is our consciousness fundamentally different than a gorilla's? If the answer is no, then I'd ask if a gorilla's consciousness is fundamentally different than a baboon's? I think that answer has to be no by definition, assuming the first answer is no. And so on, until we get to where a human's consciousness is not fundamentally different than a tube worm, just a continuum of degrees. I'm not sure w…

Here's my question: Is our consciousness fundamentally different than a gorilla's?

> If the answer is no, then I'd ask if a gorilla's consciousness is fundamentally different than a baboon's? I think that answer has to be no by definition, assuming the first answer is no.

> And so on, until we get to where a human's consciousness is not fundamentally different than a tube worm, just a continuum of degrees.

> I'm not sure what to draw from this.

At least the answer to this is simple:

'fundamentally different' is not a transitive function

:-)

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#162

Post by [deleted] »

ben_w wrote: post #154

Copying what I said 9 days ago when this post first appeared but didn't catch enough attention and only got two replies including my own: > I fail to make sense of the claim that there is such an “explanatory gap.” This is essentially saying "I don't understand therefore you are wrong". > We do not need to explain why it looks red for the same reason that we do not have to explain why the animal that we call “cat” lo…

[deleted]

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#163

Post by 4gotunameagain »

ben_w wrote: post #154

Copying what I said 9 days ago when this post first appeared but didn't catch enough attention and only got two replies including my own: > I fail to make sense of the claim that there is such an “explanatory gap.” This is essentially saying "I don't understand therefore you are wrong". > We do not need to explain why it looks red for the same reason that we do not have to explain why the animal that we call “cat” lo…

> We did in fact need this to get AI to recognise cats.

I believe that this is simply because of the way we train ML, with labelled data. It is quite conceivable that we could get an ML model to recognise cats just by some form of multidimensional clustering of training data.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#165

Post by don_esteban »

zetalyrae wrote: post #46
thepasch wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either all the computation happens "in the dark", as in a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet or a slide rule or Factorio, in which case we are p-zombies and consciousness is an illusion, which contradicts every waking moment of our experience You are still presupposing the premise here, in multiple ways: 1) "My experience is that I'm conscious, and math cannot result in consciousness, therefore consciousness is a s…

> Question: who says math cannot result in consciousness? Which math? Why some kinds of information processing and not others? If all information processing leads to consciousness: why does consciousness stop at the boundary of the brain? Why isn't every neuron individually and separately conscious? Why not the two hemispheres of the brain? Why isn't every causally-linked volume of the universe a single mind? > Impli…

> The point is that it's not clear at all what empirical knowledge we could acquire that would explain consciousness.

What about this: - this class of brain circuits are not not firing when the person is (unconscious, in deep sleep,a newborn/animal obviously just directly responding to outside stimuli), while obviously active when a person performs conscious activity - this class of brain circuits does not exists at very primitive species and is progressively more developed the higher the evolution chain you go

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#166

Post by autoexec »

sambapa wrote: post #108
deyiao wrote: post #35

Humans do not have souls, nor do they possess free will in the traditional sense. What we call “consciousness” is merely a product of evolution, and also a tool shaped by evolution. In essence, consciousness is a complex information input-output system. When such a system reaches a certain level of complexity, it inevitably generates the concept of “I” as a way to simplify the processing of overwhelming information.…

If this comment is serious, then you may have the beginnings of AI psychosis

"Praise be to AI" sounds like something you shouldn't reach in the beginnings of AI psychosis. Same with "I've found a simple answer to the nature of consciousness and the question of the existence of Gods". At that point you've got to in be pretty deep.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#167

Post by MrOrelliOReilly »

This article is pretty slim on details, but I agree with the general argument that dualism is unnecessary to explain phenomenal consciousness. The word "consciousness" has a lot of baggage, which causes us to mislabel cognition as consciousness. [1] This is why I really like using terms like "qualia" or _phenomenal_ consciousness to make explicit what we're talking about.

I still don't like this new trend of dismissing the hard problem altogether. We really don't have an explanation of phenomenal consciousness—it might even require novel physics to explain! [2]

I'd also like to point out that, though this might seem like a semantic argument, it has meaningful consequences for how we approach science and ethics. [3] For example, if we are physicalists and accept that phenomenal consciousness is a property of the world, what does this tell us about other unobservable properties of the world science may be missing? (Recall that we only know about phenomenal consciousness through our own experience of it; we cannot observe it in others)

[1] https://write.ianwsperber.com/p/what-is-the-color-blue

[2] https://youtu.be/DI6Hu-DhQwE?si=RB3qkt6PZ62SVpx3&t=2493

[3] https://write.ianwsperber.com/p/morality-without-consciousne...

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#168

Post by dcminter »

> can I believe my own conclusion of having this mysterious non-physical experience, knowing that if I were a zombie, I would be convinced of the same without actually having it?

The point of the philosophical zombie is that they don't experience anything, nor do they convince themselves of anything. If they're "experiencing" or "convincing themselves" then they're not philosophical zombies by definition.

We all (presumably, although I might wonder about the author) know that consciousness is a thing, we don't have anything like a rigid definition of it. Perhaps we never will, but this kind of hot air is unlikely to ever get us closer to understanding it.

Tiresome article by someone just being contrary for the sake of having something to say.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#169

Post by altmanaltman »

barrkel wrote: post #140
jwilliams wrote: post #111

Rovelli is arguing (I think) that we need to fundamentally view consciousness as a natural phenomenon - albeit one that is extremely complex and poorly understood. So we ditch the philosophical puzzle and focus on the reality we can perceive and reason on. The problem is that consciousness is a philosophical invention (and a slippery one at that). We're in the wrong frame. If you accept consciousness is a thing you e…

The problem isn't really consciousness, it's qualia. Specifically, pain and suffering. If we create a machine that is able to print on the terminal 'I feel pain', how do we know when to believe the machine is feeling pain? This isn't enough: echo "I feel pain" Is a very complicated set of matrix multiplications enough?

Before that, you need to answer whether a machine can even feel pain or not, not whether it is telling the truth or not. We feel pain because we have a nervous system that reacts to the physical world and it is an indicator that something is wrong. That doesn't translate at all to any machine I know of. If we end up building a nervous system and a basic functioning brain and hook it up to a machine then sure its an interesting question

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#170

Post by grumbel »

barrkel wrote: post #140
jwilliams wrote: post #111

Rovelli is arguing (I think) that we need to fundamentally view consciousness as a natural phenomenon - albeit one that is extremely complex and poorly understood. So we ditch the philosophical puzzle and focus on the reality we can perceive and reason on. The problem is that consciousness is a philosophical invention (and a slippery one at that). We're in the wrong frame. If you accept consciousness is a thing you e…

The problem isn't really consciousness, it's qualia. Specifically, pain and suffering. If we create a machine that is able to print on the terminal 'I feel pain', how do we know when to believe the machine is feeling pain? This isn't enough: echo "I feel pain" Is a very complicated set of matrix multiplications enough?

Pain isn't just saying the word, it's a signal that changes your behavior generation in a way that conflicts with your self model.
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