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

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

noemamag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 822 posts

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

#21

Post by Domenic_S »

greygoo222 wrote: post #3

Utterly asinine article that doesn't understand its own subject matter.

> I fail to make sense of the claim that there is such an “explanatory gap.” It regards what we would understand if we were to understand something that we currently do not understand. Forgive the muddled question, but: How can we know now what we would understand if we were to understand something we do not currently understand?

Rhetorical nonsense. If I'm a student about to take geometry for the first time, I can certainly have a sense of what I'll understand when I "understand something [I] do not currently understand".

The explanatory gap, IIUC, is rather simple: we can't explain why neurons firing results in us feeling/experiencing the world. This doesn't seem controversial to me.

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

#22

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

dabadabad00 wrote: post #20

Comically wrong. Quantum holography will someday demonstrate an analog information capacity of the quantum domain far exceeding the spin disposition. Our minds use this domain by mass entanglement within our very own neurons. You don’t want to hear it, though our minds may entangle and an entire culture exists among us who can traverse and manipulate the consciousness of others. They are responsible for the “voices i…

As much as I disliked TFA, I disliked this comment, which is so arrogantly self-assured of its own 0-evidence theories, even more.

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

#25

Post by anon291 »

k33n wrote: post #12
solveiga wrote: post #7

I don’t think consciousness exists, at least not in the way people talk about it. First, there’s no clear definition that everyone agrees on. Second, there’s no way to test whether something has it. Does a cow have it? A dog? A spider? If you can't test for it and even define it, how can you claim its real?

It’s possible that you’re not conscious. So your subjective view may be correct for you. To those who are conscious, this argument doesn’t really matter, and the proof is simply in the pudding.

No conscious person can know if another person is conscious. There is no 'sensation' of experiencing another conscious. Given how many people can and have been fooled by AI, this lack of ability to sense another consciousness is clear.

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

#26

Post by solveiga »

zetalyrae wrote: post #11

The first point (analogizing the hard problem to the reaction to Darwinism) is a very common rhetorical move: an analogy and history of ideas, which is convincing to many people, but what does it prove? > A philosophical zombie would claim to know what subjective experience is; otherwise, it would be empirically distinguishable from a human. Chalmers’s point is that the existence of the hypothetical, irreducible cons…

I think this hard problem has a simple answer that people just don’t like: consciousness is a powerful (and fundamental to our "calculator brain") illusion. And yes, a spreadsheet simulating every neuron in your brain would also simulate it. The fact that it’s difficult to conceptualize doesn’t mean it’s not the answer. Similar to how we struggle to intuit general relativity, or to imagine the pre–Big Bang state of the universe (or its non-existence), or to picture what it’s like to be dead. Our intuition simply isn’t equipped for these cases, period, and it pushes back hard against them. Consciousness belongs in that same category IMO

Also, the emergence of a consciousness like illusion kinda follows from an evolutionary perspective. To survive, a "calculator" brain needs a model of the external world in order to predict how it will evolve and to act in ways that improve survival odds. Once such a model exists, it becomes almost inevitable that it also includes a model of the system itself, since the brain is also part of the world it is modeling and an agent within it. This self-referential loop is likely what we experience as "consciousness" and it becomes central to how we understand and navigate reality.

If we accept this framing, many traditional paradoxes dissolve on their own. The problem stops being "hard" in substance and becomes hard only in terms of imagination.

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

#27

Post by thesmtsolver2 »

ekianjo wrote: post #10

Philosophers being philosophers and not advancing the discussion at all.

A lot of science and math and logic originated from philosophers posing questions and even coming up with answers (then those fields graduated out of philosophy)

This is the standard blub programmer but in science. The blub physicists doesn't understand anything more complex or higher-level than his daily abstractions.

https://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

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

#28

Post by wordpad »

solveiga wrote: post #7

I don’t think consciousness exists, at least not in the way people talk about it. First, there’s no clear definition that everyone agrees on. Second, there’s no way to test whether something has it. Does a cow have it? A dog? A spider? If you can't test for it and even define it, how can you claim its real?

It certainly doesn't seem like consciousness exists. Although to disprove that hypothesis all we need is to find a single counter-example, which coincidentally all of us can provide via our personal experience of self.

It would be fine for an unconsciouss intelligence to maintain that hypothesis lacking any evidence to the contrary, but for us it seems we are just all gaslighting ourselves to ignore the one counter example we all have.

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

#29

Post by dfabulich »

zetalyrae wrote: post #11

The first point (analogizing the hard problem to the reaction to Darwinism) is a very common rhetorical move: an analogy and history of ideas, which is convincing to many people, but what does it prove? > A philosophical zombie would claim to know what subjective experience is; otherwise, it would be empirically distinguishable from a human. Chalmers’s point is that the existence of the hypothetical, irreducible cons…

Rovelli writes, "I fail to make sense of the claim that there is such an “explanatory gap.”"

Carlos Rovelli has failed to understand the arguments for dualism, and is proudly sure that they must be nonsense.

If there's ever to be a "solution" to the dualism/materialism argument, it cannot possibly end in a "slam dunk" where it turns out that one side or the other was simply nonsensical.

IMO, the problem is actually one of epistemological framing. If I ask what "I" know, assuming that my internal experiences are the basis of my knowledge, then I can't accept materialism. But if we ask what "we" know, as a society of scientists and philosophers, together we find only natural material, and no evidence for dualism.

(It's like the prisoner's dilemma. What's best for me is to defect. What's best for us is to cooperate.)

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

#30

Post by thesmtsolver2 »

solveiga wrote: post #26
zetalyrae wrote: post #11

The first point (analogizing the hard problem to the reaction to Darwinism) is a very common rhetorical move: an analogy and history of ideas, which is convincing to many people, but what does it prove? > A philosophical zombie would claim to know what subjective experience is; otherwise, it would be empirically distinguishable from a human. Chalmers’s point is that the existence of the hypothetical, irreducible cons…

I think this hard problem has a simple answer that people just don’t like: consciousness is a powerful (and fundamental to our "calculator brain") illusion. And yes, a spreadsheet simulating every neuron in your brain would also simulate it. The fact that it’s difficult to conceptualize doesn’t mean it’s not the answer. Similar to how we struggle to intuit general relativity, or to imagine the pre–Big Bang state of t…

The illusion framing/answer falls apart with some minor prodding.

What makes the computation in the brain special from other physical processes to give rise to this illusion?

The sewer system in NYC is complex. Does that also have the same illusion? Does the sewer in NYC have consciousness?

Post reply on HN