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Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

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Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#181

Post by amelius »

Aardwolf wrote: post #170
amelius wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that I carefully used the word "likely". There is no proof. Simply Occam's razor. Why would something that has no consciousness make up that it has consciousness?

> Why would something that has no consciousness make up that it has consciousness? You can make a computer program `printf("I have consciousness\n");` But I actually also didn't follow the rest of the argument. How does whether other people say they have consciousness or not, tell anything about whether it's physics based or not? If it's physics based, people could say they have consciousness. If it's not physics bas…

The argument goes as follows:

1. People are talking about consciousness.

2. This talking happens in the physical world (soundwaves are being produced, etc.)

3. We assume that other people have consciousness since they talk about it. As you say, there is no absolute proof of this, but Occam's razor makes it silly to assume otherwise.

4. So, the soundwaves (physics) are happening because of consciousness. There is a causal link from consciousness to physics.

This means that consciousness is not simply the observation of physics. It actually loops back into it, or physics is an emergent property of consciousness.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#182

Post by fzaninotto »

pa7x1 wrote: post #7

I wouldn't be surprised if consciousness ~conscience~ is just an emergent phenomenon resulting from any sufficiently powerful cognitive system (either biological or artificial) with sufficient inputs of its environment and, crucially, of itself. So as to be able to develop a rich model of itself and its relationship with its environment, and that thing will resemble a whole lot what we call consciousness ~conscience~…

Many neuroscientists think like you, see Attention Schema Theory [1], popularized by Michael Graziano at Princeton University. This is a form of Illusionism [2] - according to Graziano, consciousness is an illusion.

I've explored this idea by building a chatbot with an inner monologue, Molly [3], based on GPT-3. The result is spectacular: it gives the illusion of consciousness. And, according to Information Schema Theory, that means that this cognitive system IS conscious.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism#Illusi... [3]: https://marmelab.com/blog/2023/06/06/artificial-consciousnes...

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#183

Post by moritzwarhier »

> Consciousness is everything a person experiences — what they taste, hear, feel and more. It is what gives meaning and value to our lives, Chalmers says.

> Despite a vast effort — and a 25-year bet — researchers still don’t understand how our brains produce it, however. “It started off as a very big philosophical mystery,” Chalmers adds. “But over the years, it’s gradually been transmuting into, if not a ‘scientific’ mystery, at least one that we can get a partial grip on scientifically.”

I'm sure these two scientists have interesting things to say that I never thought about.

But I stopped reading the article at this point, because that's where I expected a precise definition of consciousness. That first sentence isn't one as far as I am concerned.

Philosophy without strict definitions and a common language tends to be useless. And I love philosophy and consider it the root of all science.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#184

Post by ttctciyf »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #93
ttctciyf wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You doubt that you have experiences?

You doubt the existence of thunder and lighting? But surely those prove the might of the great Jupiter! All joking aside : Of course I'm not particularly married to the position that "Consciousness doesn't exist". But it seems a bit suss that it has been so ill defined for so long. Some days I really do wonder if maybe it belongs in the same pre-scientific category as Vis Vitalis or Luminiferous Ether.

The link between the thunderstorms and Jupiter is theoretical, but our having conscious experience is directly given.

The fact that something for which, unlike phlogiston or the Aether, we have direct incontrovertible evidence (denial of which evidence puts one on pain of having to justify one's own sanity and fitness for discourse), has yet so eluded definition in strict functional / scientific terms, points more to the likelihood we're suffering from some collective conceptual confusion, afaics.

Rather than consciousness being a primitive pre-scientific intellectual construct, perhaps our current scientific / functional ontology will later be regarded as pre-X, where X is the name for whatever resolution of the aforementioned conceptual confusion we achieve such that it allows us to integrate the fact of consciousness into a unified rational account of the universe.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#185

Post by atlantic »

munch117 wrote: post #158
civilized wrote: post #14

Consciousness is not a well-scoped object of scientific investigation. It doesn't have a definition or characterization based on observable things or behavior. If I were a natural scientist, I wouldn't take a bet that I can scientifically explain a phenomenon which I can't even describe in terms of observable things.

Definition: Consciousness is those parts of the workings of the brain that are available to introspection. End definition. People so love to throw all kinds of babble under the heading of consciousness, so there's scant chance that people will agree on any kind of definition, let alone this one. But it's what I've been using, and I find that it makes all the supposedly hard questions about consciousness very simple t…

So you're taking the question under investigation - whether consciousness is fundamental, or whether it is an epiphenomenon, possibly of brain function - and making one of the possible answers into an axiom of your system? How does that solve anything? You're just imposing a particular hypothesis before investigation even gets started.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#186

Post by mananaysiempre »

quus wrote: post #178

Im a grad student in philosophy, and this one unfortunately risks perpetuating the annoying myth that philosophers are somehow in competition with the natural sciences — usually believed by people who have literally never taken any courses in philosophy. Quine said that philosophical inquiry is continuous with empirical inquiry, but I think it’d be fine to say that it’s just complementary.

My philosophy professor had a multi-volume (non-English-language) textbook called “Introduction to the science of philosophy”, so, uh, I dunno.

Claiming it’s complementary is also not benign—it brings along the burden of pointing out some holes in the scientific enterprise, a general conception of how to fill them, and at least some practical success in doing so. I don’t believe that to be impossible and have some things I could suggest there, but I also carry the common scepticism caused by philosophers not getting literally anything right about the 20th-century-physics picture of the world right ahead of time, so I don’t believe it trivial either.

(Yeah, quantum computing and microscopic, low-energy quantum physics in general is kind of an exception to my provocative assertion above, though one could argue that the people who started that were from a counterculture of physics first and philosophers only as a consequence of that. I don’t really want to throw shade on philosophers here, only to express my bewilderment that people who made it their life’s work to speculate what the stuff of the world could be got it so wrong so many times. People in other fields also got it all wrong, of course, but then they didn’t claim to be particularly serious about their speculation.)

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#187

Post by atlantic »

Aardwolf wrote: post #157
amelius wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are at least two observable things: 1. you have consciousness 2. people are speaking about consciousness The second point makes it likely that consciousness is not simply a consequence of physics, but e.g. that it loops back into it; or perhaps it is more likely (because simpler) that physics is a consequence of consciousness.

Can you please elaborate why point 2 does that? You can never prove others have consciousness, no matter what they say (I'm not saying they don't).

You can never prove that there are others. Neither can you prove that there is a self. There is just consciousness, overlaid by various experiences, which we tend to attribute to a substantial self. So it doesn't make sense to ask for a proof that others have consciousness, until you can define self/others properly.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#188

Post by Aardwolf »

amelius wrote: post #181
Aardwolf wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would something that has no consciousness make up that it has consciousness? You can make a computer program `printf("I have consciousness\n");` But I actually also didn't follow the rest of the argument. How does whether other people say they have consciousness or not, tell anything about whether it's physics based or not? If it's physics based, people could say they have consciousness. If it's not physics bas…

The argument goes as follows: 1. People are talking about consciousness. 2. This talking happens in the physical world (soundwaves are being produced, etc.) 3. We assume that other people have consciousness since they talk about it. As you say, there is no absolute proof of this, but Occam's razor makes it silly to assume otherwise. 4. So, the soundwaves (physics) are happening because of consciousness. There is a ca…

Not all sound is created that way, e.g. rain falling from the sky is not, do you intent to mean all physics, including rain, originate from consciousness in some way (such as in theories that everything is an illusion, ...), or rather, that consciousness can affect physics in some way, e.g. because you can choose to speak and produce sound waves

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#189

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

galacticaactual wrote: post #150
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #10

How droll, isn't this the equivalent of trying to figure out how an operating system works by trying to look at activity on an encrypted SSD? And how exactly is this a win for philosophers? I'm not aware of any philosopher having made meaningful strides within the subject either. I'm sure once someone figures out how consciousness works it'll be irrefutable while seeming incredibly obvious in hindsight. Which, honest…

Clearly in the midst of your dismissive arrogance, you did not come across John Vervaeke.

Could you clarify what you mean? I don't think I'm dismissive nor arrogant. I've watched a Lex Friedman podcast with John Vervaeke but can't say I particularly remember it very well.
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